347D 


I 


WILLIAM— AN  ENGLISHMAN 


WILLIAM 
AN  ENGLISHMAN 


BY 


CICELY  HAMILTON 


NEW  YORK 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


First  published  in  America  by 

FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

in  1920 


by 
Frederick  A,  Stokes  Company 


WILLIAM— AN  ENGLISHMAN 


2136171 


WILLIAM— AN  ENGLISHMAN 


CHAPTER  I 

WILLIAM  TULLY  was  a  little  over 
three-and-twenty  when  he  emerged 
from  the  chrysalis  stage  of  his  clerk- 
dom  and  became  a  Social  Reformer.  His  life 
and  doings  until  the  age  of  twenty-three,  had  given 
small  promise  of  the  distinctions  of  his  future 
career;  from  a  mild:mannered,  pale-faced  and  un- 
der-sized boy  he  had  developed  into  a  mild-man- 
nered, pale-faced  little  adult  standing  five  foot 
five  in  his  boots.  Educated  at  a  small  private 
school  in  the  suburbs  of  London,  his  record  for 
conduct  was  practically  spotless  and  he  once  took 
a  prize  for  Divinity;  further,  to  the  surprise  and 
relief  of  his  preceptors,  he  managed  to  scrape 
through  the  Senior  Cambridge  Local  Examina- 
tion before  he  was  transferred  to  a  desk  in  the 
office  of  a  London  insurance  company.  His  pre- 
ceptor-in-chief,  in  a  neatly-written  certificate,  as- 
sured his  future  employers  that  they  would  find 
him  painstaking  and  obedient  —  and  William,  for 
the  first  six  years  of  his  engagement,  lived  up  to 


2        WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

the  character  given  him.  His  mother,  a  sharp- 
eyed,  masterful  woman,  had  brought  him  up  to 
be  painstaking  and  obedient;  it  might  be  said 
with  truth  that  as  long  as  she  lived  he  did  not 
know  how  to  be  otherwise.  It  is  true  he  disliked 
his  office  superiors  vaguely,  for  the  restrictions 
they  placed  upon  his  wishes  —  just  as,  for  the 
same  reason,  he  vaguely  disliked  his  mother;  but 
his  wishes  being  indeterminate  and  his  ambition 
non-existent,  his  vague  dislike  never  stiffened  into 
active  resentment. 

It  would  seem  that  the  supreme  effort  of  pass- 
ing his  Cambridge  Local  had  left  him  mentally 
exhausted  for  a  season;  at  any  rate,  from  the  con- 
clusion of  his  school-days  till  he  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Faraday,  his  reading  was  practically 
confined  to  romantic  and  humorous  literature. 
He  was  a  regular  patron  of  the  fiction  department 
of  the  municipal  lending  library  and  did  not  dis- 
dain to  spend  modestly  on  periodicals  of  the  type 
of  Snappy  Bits.  He  was  unable  to  spend  more 
than  modestly  because  his  earnings,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  small  sum  for  fares  and  pocket-money, 
were  annexed  by  his  mother  each  Saturday  as  a 
matter  of  normal  routine.  The  manner  of  her 
annexation  made  discussion  singularly  difficult; 
and  if  William  ever  felt  stirrings  of  rebellion  over 
the  weekly  cash  delivery  he  was  careful  never  to 
betray  them. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN        3 

With  his  colleagues  of  the  office  Tully  was  a 
negligible  quantity.  He  was  not  unpopular  —  it 
was  merely  that  he  did  not  matter.  His  mother's 
control  of  the  family  funds  was  no  doubt  in  part 
accountable  for  his  comrades'  neglect  of  his  so- 
ciety; but  his  own  habits  and  manners  were  still 
more  largely  to  blame,  since  besides  being  pains- 
taking and  obedient  he  was  unobtrusive  and  dif- 
fident. There  was  once  a  project  on  foot  in  the 
office  to  take  him  out  and  make  him  drunk  —  but 
nothing  came  of  it  because  no  one  was  sufficiently 
interested  in  William  to  give  up  an  evening  to  the 
job. 

The  crisis  in  his  hitherto  well-ordered  life  came 
when  his  mother  died  suddenly.  This  was  in 
October,  1910.  William  had  gone  to  the  office  as 
usual  that  morning,  leaving  his  mother  apparently 
in  her  usual  health ;  he  returned  in  the  evening  to 
blinds  already  drawn  down.  A  neighbor  (fe- 
male) was  in  waiting  in  the  sitting-room  and  broke 
the  great  news  with  a  sense  of  its  importance  and 
her  own ;  she  took  William's  hand,  told  him  with 
sniffs  that  it  was  the  will  of  the  Lord,  and  entered 
into  clinical  details.  William  sat  down  rather 
suddenly  when  he  realized  that  there  would  be  no 
one  in  future  to  annex  his  weekly  earnings;  then, 
shocked  by  his  lack  of  filial  feeling,  he  endeavored 
to  produce  an  emotion  more  suited  to  the  solemn 
occasion.  Disconcerted  by  a  want  of  success 


4        WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

which  he  feared  was  apparent  to  his  audience,  he 
fidgeted,  dry-eyed  and  awkward  —  and  finally,  all 
things  considered,  acted  well  and  wisely  by  de- 
manding to  be  left  alone.  To  his  relief  the  de- 
mand was  accepted  as  reasonable  and  proper  in 
the  first  moments  of  his  grief;  the  sympathizer 
withdrew,  wiping  her  eyes  —  unnecessarily  —  and 
hoping  that  God  would  support  him.  He  locked 
the  door  stealthily  and  stared  at  his  mother's  arm- 
chair; he  was  a  little  afraid  of  its  emptiness,  he 
was  also  shocked  and  excited.  He  knew  instinc- 
tively that  more  was  to  happen,  that  life  from  now 
on  would  be  something  new  and  different.  .  .  . 
The  arm-chair  was  empty;  the  masterful  little 
woman  who  had  borne  him,  slapped  him,  man- 
aged him  and  cowed  him  —  the  masterful  little 
woman  was  dead!  There  was  no  one  now  to 
whom  he  was  accountable;  no  one  of  whom  he 
was  afraid.  .  .  .  He  walked  on  tiptoe  round  the 
tiny  room,  feeling  strangely  and  pleasantly  alive. 
The  next  day  increased  the  sense  of  his  new- 
found importance ;  his  mother  had  died  rich,  as  he 
and  she  understood  riches.  She  had  trusted  her 
son  in  nothing,  not  even  with  the  knowledge  of 
her  income,  and  after  the  stinting  and  scraping  to 
which  she  had  accustomed  him  he  was  amazed  to 
find  himself  master  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
a  year,  the  interest  on  capital  gradually  and  care- 
fully invested.  In  his  amazement  —  at  first  in- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN        5 

credulous  —  he  trod  on  air,  while  his  mind  wan- 
dered hazily  over  the  glorious  possibilities  of 
opulent  years  to  come ;  the  only  alloy  in  his  other- 
wise supreme  content  being  the  necessity  for 
preserving  (at  least  until  the  funeral  was  over) 
a  decent  appearance  of  dejection.  He  felt,  too, 
the  need  of  a  friend  in  whom  to  confide,  some  one 
of  his  own  age  and  standing  before  whom  it  would 
not  be  needful  to  keep  up  the  appearance  of  dejec- 
tion and  who  would  not  be  shocked  at  the  bab- 
blings of  his  stirred  and  exultant  soul;  and  it  was 
this  natural  longing  for  a  confidant  which,  on  the 
day  following  his  mother's  funeral,  led  to  the  be- 
ginning of  his  friendship  with  his  fellow-clerk, 
Faraday. 

The  head  of  his  department,  meeting  him  in  the 
passage,  had  said  a  few  perfunctory  and  conven- 
tional words  of  condolence  —  whereto  William 
had  muttered  a  sheepish  "  Thank  you,  sir,"  and 
escaped  as  soon  as  might  be.  The  familiar  office 
after  his  four  days'  estrangement  from  it  affected 
him  curiously  and  unpleasantly;  he  felt  his  newly- 
acquired  sense  of  importance  slipping  gradually 
away  from  him,  felt  himself  becoming  once  again 
the  underling  and  creature  of  routine  —  the  Wil- 
liam Tully,  obedient  and  painstaking,  who  had 
earned  from  his  childhood  the  favorable  contempt 
of  his  superiors.  It  was  borne  in  on  him  as  the 
hours  went  by  that  it  was  not  enough  to  accept 


6        WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

good  fortune  —  good  fortune  had  to  be  made  use 
of;  and  he  began  to  make  plans  in  an  irregular, 
tentative  fashion,  biting  the  end  of  his  pen  and 
neglecting  his  work.  Should  he  chuck  the  office? 
and  if  he  chucked  it,  what  then?  .  .  .  Here  im- 
agination failed  him;  his  life  had  been  so  ordered, 
so  bound  down  and  directed  by  others,  that  even 
his  desires  were  tamed  to  the  wishes  of  others 
and  left  to  himself  he  could  not  tell  what  he  de- 
sired. The  need  for  sympathy  and  guidance  be- 
came imperative ;  driving  him,  when  the  other 
occupants  of  the  room  had  departed  for  lunch,  to 
unbosom  himself  to  Faraday. 

In  his  longing  to  talk  he  would  have  addressed 
himself  almost  to  any  one;  but  on  the  whole,  and 
in  spite  of  an  entire  ignorance  of  his  habits  and 
character,  he  was  glad  it  was  Faraday  who  was 
left  behind  to  hear  him  —  a  newcomer,  recently 
transferred  from  another  branch  and,  as  William 
realized  (if  only  half-consciously)  like  himself 
regarded  by  their  fellow-clerks  as  a  bit  of  an 
outsider.  A  sallow-faced  young  man,  dark- 
haired  and  with  large  hazel  eyes,  he  was  neatly 
garbed  as  became  an  insurance  clerk;  but  there 
was  a  suggestion  of  discomfort  about  his  conven- 
tional neatness,  just  as  there  was  a  suggestion  of 
effort  about  his  personal  cleanliness.  He  worked 
hard  and  steadily;  taking  no  part  in  the  interludes 
of  blithesome  chat  wherewith  his  companions  en- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN        7 

livened  their  hours  of  toil  and  appearing  to  be 
satisfied  rather  than  annoyed  by  the  knowledge 
of  his  own  isolation.  He  had  spoken  to  William 
but  two  or  three  times  and  always  in  the  way  of 
business  —  nor  was  his  profile  bent  over  a  ledger 
particularly  suggestive  of  sympathy;  William's 
emotions,  however,  had  reached  exploding-point, 
and  the  door  had  hardly  closed  behind  the  last  of 
their  fellows  when  he  blurted  out,  "  I  say,"  and 
Faraday  raised  his  head. 

u  I  say,"  William  blurted  again,  "  did  you  know 

—  my  mother's  dead?" 

"Ah  —  yes,"  said  Faraday  uncomfortably;  he 
believed  he  was  being  appealed  to  for  sympathy, 
and  fidgeted,  clearing  his  throat;  "I  —  I  had 
heard  it  mentioned.  I  needn't  say  I'm  very  sorry 

—  extremely.   ...   I  suppose  you  were  very  much 
attached  to  her?  " 

William  reflected  for  a  moment  and  then  an- 
swered honestly,  "  No." 

"Indeed!"  Faraday  returned,  surprised  as 
well  as  uncomfortable.  Not  knowing  what  fur- 
ther to  say,  his  eyes  went  back  to  the  ledger  and 
the  conversation  languished.  It  was  William 
who  resumed  it  —  wondering  at  the  difficulty  of 
expressing  his  bubbling  emotions. 

"  I  don't  mean  to  say,"  he  explained  with  a 
twinge  of  remorse,  "  that  I  had  anything  to  com- 
plain of.  My  mother  always  did  her  duty  by  me. 


8        WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

But  we  weren't  what  you  might  call  sympathetic." 

"  Indeed!  "  Faraday  repeated  - — still  at  sea  as 
to  the  motive  of  the  conversation. 

"  It  was  unfortunate,"  William  went  on,  "  but 
it  couldn't  be  helped.  I  am  sure  she  was  a  very 
good  woman."  (He  said  this  with  the  more  con- 
fidence because,  from  his  childhood  up,  he  had 
always  associated  goodness  with  lack  of  amiabil- 
ity.) "  But  that  wasn't  what  I  wanted  to  say. 
What  I  wanted  to  say  was,  she  has  left  me  a  good 
deal  of  money." 

"Indeed?"  said  Faraday  for  the  third  time, 
adding  something  about  "  congratulation."  He 
hoped  the  episode  was  over  —  but  William  was 
only  beginning. 

"  I've  been  wondering,"  he  said,  "  what  I 
should  do  —  now  that  I'm  independent.  I  don't 
want  to  go  on  like  this.  It's  a  waste  —  when 
you've  got  money.  But  I  don't  know  how  to  set 
about  things.  ...  If  some  one  would  put  me  in 
the  way !  " 

Faraday,  raising  his  eyes  from  the  ledger,  met 
the  wistful  appeal  in  William's  and  imagined  him- 
self enlightened. 

"  I  see,"  he  said  interrogatively;  "  then  you 
haven't  got  your  living  to  earn  —  you  are  not  tied 
here  any  longer?  You  can  direct  your  own  life 
and  take  up  any  line  you  choose  ?  " 

"  Yes,"    William    assented,    pleased   with    the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN        9 

phrase;  "I  can  direct  my  own  life  —  certainly." 

"  Which,"  Faraday  suggested,  "  was  difficult 
for  you  before?  " 

"  Very,"  said  William  emphatically. 

"  And,"  the  other  went  on,  "  now  that  you  are 
your  own  man  you  wish  to  take  the  line  that  at- 
tracts you  and  be  of  some  use?  " 

"  Oh,  certainly,"  William  assented  again  — 
perhaps  a  shade  less  emphatically.  So  far  his 
ideas  had  run  more  upon  pleasure  than  useful- 
ness. 

Faraday  reflected  with  his  chin  resting  on  his 
hand. 

"  Why  have  you  asked  me?"  he  demanded 
suddenly  —  with  the  accent  strongly  on  the  "  me." 

"  I  know  so  few  people,"  William  explained 
humbly.  "  I  mean,  of  course,  people  who  could 
give  me  any  ideas.  ...  I  thought  you  wouldn't 
mind — at  least  I  hoped  you  wouldn't.  ...  I 
know  it's  unusual  —  but  if  you  could  help  me  in 
any  way?  .  .  .  With  suggestions,  you  know." 

Again  Faraday  reflected  with  his  chin  resting 
on  his  hand. 

"  I  could  put  you,"  he  said  at  last,  "  in  touch 
with  people  who  might  help  you.  I  should  be 
very  pleased  to  do  so.  ...  Of  course,  I  should 
like  to  know  more  of  you  first  —  what  your  views 
are " 

"  Of  course,"  William  agreed  vaguely,  puzzled 


10      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

partly  by  the  words  and  partly  by  the  enigmatic 
manner. 

"  If  you've  nothing  else  to  do,"  Faraday  con- 
tinued, "  perhaps  you'll  come  round  to  my  rooms 
to-night  for  a  talk?  Say  at  half-past  eight.  We 
could  discuss  things  more  comfortably  there." 

William,  still  puzzled  by  the  hint  of  mystery  in 
his  manner,  murmured  that  he  also  should  be 
very  pleased,  and  Faraday  gave  him  the  address 
—  returning  forthwith  to  his  ledger  in  sign  that 
•he  considered  the  incident  closed  for  the  present. 
He  had  a  distinctly  authoritative  way  with  him, 
and  William,  who  would  gladly  have  continued 
the  subject,  had  perforce  to  be  content  with  won- 
dering what  the  night's  discussion  and  exchange 
of  "  views  "  would  bring  forth;  an  evening  spent 
away  from  home  was  so  rare  an  event  in  his  life 
that  the  prospect  of  his  visit  to  Faraday's  rooms 
afforded  him  food  for  an  afternoon's  busy  specula- 
tion. His  own  domicile  being  in  the  region  of 
Camberwell,  he  did  not  return  to  it  after  office 
hours  but  whiled  away  the  time  by  dinner  at  an 
Oxford  Street  Lyons  —  secretly  glorying  in  the 
length  of  his  bill  and  contrasting  his  power  of 
spending  what  he  liked  with  the  old  days  of 
doled-out  allowance.  He  rang  down  a  sovereign 
at  the  pay-desk,  gathered  up  his  change  and 
strolled  out  of  the  building  with  an  air  —  and  at 
half-past  eight  precisely  found  himself  outside 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN       11 

Faraday's  lodgings  in  a  mournful  side-street  in 
Bloomsbury.  A  shabby  maid-servant  ushered 
him  upstairs  to  a  shabby,  paper-strewn  room 
where  Faraday,  pipe  in  mouth,  rose  to  greet  him. 

They  were  not  long  in  finding  out  that  the  in- 
vitation had  been  given  and  accepted  under  a  mis- 
apprehension on  both  sides.  Faraday,  as  soon 
as  he  had  settled  his  guest  in  a  chair,  came  straight 
to  the  point  with  "  Now  tell  me  —  how  long  have 
you  been  interested  in  social  questions?  " 

"In  social  questions?"  William  repeated 

blankly.  "  I'm  afraid  I  don't What  sort 

of  questions  do  you  mean?" 

It  was  Faraday's  turn  to  be  taken  aback,  and, 
though  he  did  not  say  it,  his  eyes  looked,  "  Then 

what  the  devil ?"  William's  fell  before 

them  nervously,  and  he  shifted  in  his  chair  like  a 
child  detected  in  a  blunder. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  don't "  he  said  again  —  and 

halted. 

"  Then  you  didn't  know,"  his  companion 
queried,  "that  I  am  '  Vindex '  of  The  Torch?" 

"  I'm  afraid  not,"  muttered  William,  who  had 
heard  neither  of  one  nor  the  other. 

"  Vindex "  of  The  Torch  sighed  inwardly. 
He  was  young,  ambitious,  fiercely  in  earnest  and 
ever  on  the  look-out  for  his  Chance ;  and,  the  wish 
being  father  to  the  thought,  he  had  momentarily 
mistaken  William  for  an  embodiment  of  his 


12      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Chance  and  dreamed  dreams  since  the  morning 
—  dreams  of  a  comrade  like-minded  and  willing 
to  be  led,  whose  newly-inherited  riches  might  be 
used  to  endow  a  periodical  that  should  preach  a 
purer  and  more  violent  rebellion  even  than  The 
Torch  itself.  With  the  aid  of  William's  three 
pounds  a  week  —  magnified  many  times  over  in 
the  eyes  of  his  eager  mind  —  he  had  seen  himself 
casting  the  hated  insurance  behind  him  and  de- 
voting himself  heart  and  pen  to  the  regeneration 
of  the  State  and  Race  by  means  of  the  Class  War. 
And  lo !  —  as  a  couple  more  searching  questions 
revealed  to  him  —  in  place  of  a  patron  and  com- 
rade was  a  nervous  little  nincompoop,  bewildered 
at  finding  himself  for  the  first  time  out  of  leading- 
strings,  to  whom  a  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  was 
wealth  untold  and  who  had  never  so  much  as 
heard  of  the  Class  War !  For  a  moment  he  was 
more  than  half  inclined  to  be  angry  with  the 
nervous  little  nincompoop  whose  blundering,  ego- 
istic attempt  at  confidence  had  induced  him  to  be- 
lieve that  the  secret  of  his  identity  had  been  pen- 
etrated by  an  ardent  sympathizer.  (It  was  an 
open  secret  in  "  advanced  "  circles,  though  care- 
fully guarded  in  the  office.)  Then,  more  justly, 
he  softened,  recognizing  that  the  blunder  was  his 
own,  the  mistake  of  his  own  making  —  and,  pity- 
ing William's  dropped  jaw  and  open  confusion, 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN       13 

poured  him  out  a  whisky  and  endeavored  to  set 
him  at  his  ease. 

That  evening  in  the  company  of  Faraday  and 
his  first  whisky  was  the  turning-point  in  the  career 
of  William  Tully.  Any  man  stronger  than  him- 
self could  at  that  juncture  in  his  life  have  turned 
him  to  right  or  left;  a  push  in  the  wrong  direction 
would  have  made  of  him  an  idler  and  a  wastrel, 
and  Fate  was  in  a  kindly  mood  when  she  placed 
him  mentally  and  morally  in  charge  of  "  Vindex  " 
of  The  Torch.  She  might,  as  her  reckless  way 
is,  have  handed  over  his  little  soul  to  some  flam- 
boyant rogue  or  expert  in  small  vices;  instead,  she 
laid  it  in  the  keeping  of  a  man  who  was  clean* 
living,  charged  with  unselfish  enthusiasm  and 
never  consciously  dishonest.  The  product  of  a 
Board  School  Scholarship  and  a  fiercely  energetic 
process  of  self-education  (prompted  in  part  by 
the  desire  to  excel  those  he  despised)  Faraday, 
when  William  made  his  acquaintance,  was  begin- 
ning to  realize  some  of  his  cherished  ambitions, 
beginning,  in  certain  Labor  and  Socialist  circles, 
to  be  treated  as  a  man  of  mark.  His  pen  was 
fluent  as  well  as  sarcastic,  and  if  his  numerous  con- 
tributions to  the  "  rebel  "  press  had  been  paid  for 
at  ordinary  rates  he  would  have  been  a  prosperous 
journalist. 

It  was  somewhat  of  a  shock  to  William  to  dis- 


14      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

cover  on  the  top  of  the  whisky  that  his  new  ac- 
quaintance was  a  Socialist;  but  after  the  first  and 
momentary  shock  he  swallowed  the  fact  as  he  had 
swallowed  the  alcohol  —  not  because  he  liked  it, 
but  because  it  was  something  the  narrow  circle  of 
his  mother's  friends  would  have  heartily  and 
loudly  disapproved  of.  This  reactionary  and  un- 
dutiful  attitude  of  mind  was  not  deliberate  or 
conscious ;  on  the  contrary,  he  would  certainly  have 
been  horrified  to  learn  that  it  was  the  dominant 
factor  in  his  existence  during  the  first  few  weeks 
of  his  emancipation  from  maternal  supervision 
and  control  —  urging  him  to  drink  deeply  of  Far- 
aday's brand  of  Socialism  as  it  urged  him  to  par- 
take with  unnecessary  sumptuousness  of  the  best 
that  Lyons  could  provide. 

He  acquired  the  taste  for  Faraday's  political 
views  more  thoroughly  and  easily  than  the  taste 
for  Faraday's  whisky.  The  man's  authoritative 
and  easy  manner,  the  manner  which  stood  him  in 
good  stead  with  his  audiences,  of  assuming  (quite 
honestly)  that  his  statements  were  proven  facts 
which  no  sane  human  being  could  dispute,  would 
have  made  it  impossible  for  William  to  combat 
his  opinions  even  had  his  limited  reading  and 
thinking  supplied  him  with  material  for  the  con- 
test. He  was  impressed  with  Faraday's  erudi- 
tion no  less  than  with  Faraday's  manner;  and  im- 
pressed still  more  when,  later  in  the  evening,  a 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN       15 

colleague  of  The  Torch  dropped  in  for  a  smoke 
and  a  chat.  The  pair  talked  Labor  and  Inter- 
national movements  with  the  careless  ease  of  con- 
noisseurs and  bandied  the  names  of  politicians 
contemptuously  from  mouth  to  mouth  —  William 
sitting  by  in  a  silence  dazed  and  awed,  drinking 
in  a  language  that  attracted  by  its  wild  incompre- 
hensibility and  suggestion.  His  mind  was  blank 
and  virgin  for  the  sowing  of  any  seed;  and  under 
Faraday's  influence  his  dull,  half-torpid  resent- 
ment against  the  restrictions,  physical  and  mental, 
of  his  hitherto  narrow  life  became  merged  in  a 
wider  sympathy  with  the  general  discomfort,  in 
an  honest  and  fiery  little  passion  for  Justice,  Right 
and  Progress.  That,  of  course,  was  not  the  affair 
of  one  evening's  talk;  but  even  the  one  evening's 
talk  sowed  the  seeds.  He  went  away  from  it  un- 
comfortably conscious  that  as  yet  he  had  lived 
solely  for  himself,  never  troubling  his  head  con- 
cerning the  evils  that  men  like  Faraday  were  fight- 
ing to  overcome.  The  manner  of  his  future  living 
was  decided  for  him  when  he  knocked  at  the  door 
of  Faraday's  Bloomsbury  lodging. 

His  simple  and  awed  admiration  for  his  new- 
found friend  and  faith  had  in  all  probability  more 
than  a  little  to  do  with  Faraday's  readiness  to 
allow  the  acquaintance  to  continue  —  even  a  rebel 
prophet  is  not  insensible  to  flattery.  William  be- 
came for  a  time  his  satellite  and  pupil,  the  admir- 


16      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ing  sharer  of  his  schemes,  of  his  hatreds  and  laud- 
able ambitions;  he  read  Faraday's  vehement 
articles  and  accepted  each  word  and  line.  His 
very  blankness  of  mind  made  him  an  apt  pupil, 
and  within  a  month  of  his  mother's  death  he  was 
living,  out  of  office  hours,  in  a  whirl  erf  semi- 
political  agitation,  attending  meetings  and  cram- 
ming his  head  with  pamphlets.  In  three  months 
more  all  his  hours  were  out-of-office  hours;  in  his 
enthusiasm  for  his  new  creed  and  interests  his 
neglect  of  his  professional  duties  had  become  so 
marked  that  the  manager,  after  one  or  two  warn- 
ings, called  him  into  his  room  for  a  solemn  and 
last  reprimand.  As  it  happened,  Faraday,  the 
night  before,  had  confided  to  William  the  news 
of  his  approaching  appointment  to  the  post  of 
organizing  secretary  of  the  Independent  Socialist 
Party,  an  appointment  which  would  entail  a  speedy 
retirement  from  his  hated  desk  in  the  City.  The 
news,  naturally,  had  not  increased  the  attraction 
of  the  office  for  William,  in  whom  the  spirit  of 
revolt  had  already  fermented  to  some  purpose; 
thus,  to  the  infinite  surprise  of  his  superiors,  who 
had  known  him  hitherto  as  the  meekest  of  meek 
little  clerks,  the  threat  of  dismissal  failing  im- 
provement was  countered  by  a  prompt  resignation 
as  truculent  as  William  could  make  it.  In  fact, 
in  the  exhilaration  of  the  moment,  he  treated  the 
astonished  representative  of  capitalism  to  some- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN       17 

thing  in  the  nature  of  a  speech  —  culled  princi- 
pally from  the  writings  of  "  Vindex." 

From  that  day  onwards  he  devoted  himself  to 
what  he  termed  public  life  —  a  ferment  of 
protestation  and  grievance;  sometimes  genuine, 
sometimes  manufactured  or,  at  least,  artificially 
heightened.  He  was  an  extremist,  passionately 
well-intentioned  and  with  all  the  extremist's  con- 
tempt for  those  who  balance,  see  difficulties  and 
strive  to  give  the  other  side  its  due.  He  began 
by  haunting  meetings  as  a  listener  and  a  steward; 
Faraday's  meetings  at  first,  then,  as  his  circle  of 
acquaintance  and  interest  widened,  any  sort  of 
demonstration  that  promised  a  sufficiency  of  ex- 
citement in  the  form  of  invective.  The  gentlest 
of  creatures  by  nature  and  in  private  life,  he  grew 
to  delight  in  denunciation,  and  under  its  ceaseless 
influence  the  world  divided  itself  into  two  well- 
marked  camps:  the  good  and  enlightened  who 
agreed  with  him,  and  the  fools  and  miscreants 
who  did  not.  ...  In  short,  he  became  a  poli- 
tician. 

As  I  have  said,  at  the  outset  of  his  career  he 
modestly  confined  his  energies  to  stewarding  —  to 
the  sale  of  what  propagandist  bodies  insist  on  de- 
scribing as  "  literature,"  the  taking  of  tickets, 
ushering  to  seats  and  the  like ;  but  in  a  short  time 
ambition  fired  him  and  the  fighting  spirit  thereby 
engendered  led  him  to  opposition  meetings  where, 


i8      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

on  Faraday's  advice,  he  tried  heckling  the  enemy 
speakers.  His  first  and  flustered  attempts  were 
not  over-successful,  but,  sustained  by  revolutionary 
enthusiasm,  he  refused  to  be  crushed  by  failure 
and  accompanying  jeers  and  held  doggedly  on  to 
his  purpose.  Repeated  efforts  brought  their 
measure  of  success,  and  he  began  to  be  marked 
by  his  comrades  as  a  willing  and  valuable  mem- 
ber. 

Within  a  year,  he  had  found  his  feet  and  was  a 
busy  and  full-blown  speaker  —  of  the  species  that 
can  be  relied  on  to  turn  on,  at  any  moment,  a  glib, 
excited  stream  of  partisan  fact  and  sentiment. 
His  services  were  in  constant  demand,  since  he 
spoke  for  anything  and  everything  —  provided 
only  the  promoters  of  the  meeting  were  sufficiently 
violent  in  their  efforts  to  upset  the  prevailing  or- 
der. He  had  developed  and  was  pleased  with 
himself;  Faraday,  though  still  a  great  man  in  his 
eyes,  was  more  of  an  equal  than  an  idol.  He 
was  wonderfully  happy  in  his  new,  unrestful  ex- 
istence ;  it  was  not  only  that  he  knew  he  was  doing 
great  good  and  that  applause  uplifted  him  and 
went  to  his  head  like  wine;  as  a  member  of  an 
organization  and  swayed  by  its  collective  passion, 
he  attained  to,  and  was  conscious  of,  an  emotional 
(and,  as  he  thought,  intellectual)  activity  of  which 
as  an  individual  he  would  have  been  entirely  in- 
capable. As  a  deceased  statesman  was  intoxi- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN       19 

cated  with  the  exuberance  of  his  own  verbosity,  so 
William  was  intoxicated  with  the  exuberance  of 
his  own  emotions.  There  were  moments  when 
he  looked  back  on  his  old  life  and  could  hardly 
believe  he  was  the  same  William  Tully  who  once, 
without  thought  of  the  Social  Revolution,  went 
daily  from  Camberwell  to  the  City  and  back  from 
the  City  to  Camberwell.  ...  As  time  went  on, 
he  was  entrusted  with  "  campaigns  "  and  the  stir- 
ring up  of  revolt;  and  it  was  a  proud  day  for  him 
when  a  Conservative  evening  paper,  in  connection 
with  his  share  in  a  mining  agitation,  referred  to 
him  as  a  dangerous  man.  He  wondered,  with 
pity  for  her  blindness,  what  his  mother  would 
have  thought  if  any  one  had  told  her  in  her  life- 
time that  her  son  would  turn  out  dangerous. 

As  a  matter  of  course  he  was  a  supporter  of 
votes  for  women;  an  adherent  (equally  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course)  of  the  movement  in  its  noisiest  and 
most  intolerant  form.  He  signed  petitions  de- 
nouncing forcible  feeding  and  attended  meetings 
advocating  civil  war,  where  the  civil  warriors 
complained  with  bitterness  that  the  other  side  had 
hit  them  back;  and  his  contempt  for  the  less  vir- 
ulent form  of  suffragist  was  as  great  as  his  con- 
tempt for  the  Home  Secretary  and  the  orthodox 
members  of  the  Labor  Party.  It  was  at  one  of 
these  meetings,  in  December,  1913,  that  he  met 
Griselda  Watkins. 


20      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Griselda  Watkins,  then  a  little  under  twenty- 
five,  was  his  exact  counterpart  in  petticoats;  a 
piece  of  blank-minded,  suburban  young-woman- 
hood caught  into  the  militant  suffrage  movement 
and  enjoying  herself  therein.  She  was  inclined 
to  plumpness,  had  a  fresh  complexion,  a  mouth 
slightly  ajar  and  suggestive  of  adenoids,  and  the 
satisfied  expression  which  comes  from  a  spirit  at 
rest.  Like  William,  she  had  found  peace  of  mind 
and  perennial  interest  in  the  hearty  denunciation 
of  those  who  did  not  agree  with  her. 

On  the  night  when  William  first  saw  her  she 
wore,  as  a  steward,  a  white  dress,  a  sash  with  the 
colors  of  her  association  and  a  badge  denoting 
that  she  had  suffered  for  the  Cause  in  Holloway. 
Her  manner  was  eminently  self-conscious  and  as- 
sured, but  at  the  same  time  almost  ostentatiously 
gracious  and  womanly;  it  was  the  policy  of  her 
particular  branch  of  the  suffrage  movement  to  re- 
press manifestations  of  the  masculine  type  in  its 
members  and  encourage  fluffiness  of  garb  and  ap- 
peal of  manner.  Griselda,  who  had  a  natural 
weakness  for  cheap  finery,  was  a  warm  adherent 
of  the  policy,  went  out  window-smashing  in  a 
picture-hat  and  cultivated  ladylike  charm. 

She  introduced  herself  to  William  after  the 
meeting  with  a  compliment  on  his  speech,  which 
had  been  fiery  enough  even  for  her;  they  both 
considered  the  compliment  graceful  and  for  a  few 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      21 

minutes  exchanged  sympathetic  platitudes  on 
martyrdom,  civil  war  and  the  scoundrelly  be- 
havior of  the  Government.  Even  in  those  first 
few  minutes  they  were  conscious  of  attraction  for 
each  other  and  pleased  to  discover,  in  the  course 
of  their  talk,  that  they  should  meet  again  next 
week  on  another  militant  platform. 

They  met  and  re-met  —  at  first  only  on  plat- 
forms, afterwards  more  privately  and  pleasantly. 
William,  when  his  own  meetings  did  not  claim 
him,  took  to  following  Griselda  about  to  hers,  that 
he  might  listen  entranced  to  the  words  of  en- 
thusiastic abuse  that  flowed  from  her  confident 
lips;  he  had  heard  them  all  before  and  from 
speakers  as  confident,  but  never  before  had  they 
seemed  so  inspired  and  inspiring,  never  before 
had  he  desired  with  trembling  to  kiss  the  lips  that 
uttered  them.  Griselda,  touched  as  a  woman  and 
flattered  as  an  orator  by  his  persistent  presence  in 
her  audience,  invited  him  to  tea  at  her  aunt's  house 
in  Balham;  the  visit  was  a  success,  and  from  that 
evening  (in  early  March)  the  end  was  a  foregone 
conclusion.  Their  friendship  ripened  so  fast  that 
one  night  at  the  beginning  of  April  (1914)  Wil- 
liam, escorting  her  home  from  a  meeting,  pro- 
posed to  her  on  the  top  of  an  otherwise  empty 
'bus,  and  was  duly  and  sweetly  accepted. 

There  were  none  of  the  customary  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  the  happy  pair  —  on  the  contrary,  all 


22      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

was  plain  sailing.  William's  original  income  had 
for  some  years  been  augmented  by  his  earnings 
as  a  speaker,  and  Griselda's  parents  had  left  her 
modestly  provided  for.  Her  aunt,  long  since 
converted  to  the  Movement  (to  the  extent  of  be- 
ing unable  to  talk  of  anything  but  forcible  feed- 
ing) ,  smiled  blessings  on  so  suitable  a  match  and 
proceeded  to  consider  the  trousseau;  and  after  a 
little  persuasion  on  William's  part  the  wedding 
was  fixed  for  July. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  mating  of  William  and  Griselda 
might  be  called  an  ideal  mating;  theirs 
were  indeed  two  hearts  that  beat  as  one. 
With  each  day  they  were  happier  in  each  other's 
company;  their  minds  as  it  were  flowed  together 
and  intermingled  joyously  —  minds  so  alike  and 
akin  that  it  would  have  been  difficult,  without  hear- 
ing the  voice  that  spoke  it,  to  distinguish  an  utter- 
ance of  Griselda  from  an  idea  formulated  by  Wil- 
liam. Their  prominent  blue  eyes  —  they  both 
had  prominent  blue  eyes  —  looked  out  upon  the 
world  from  exactly  the  same  point  of  view;  and 
as  they  had  been  trained  by  the  same  influences 
and  were  incapable  of  forming  an  independent 
judgment,  it  would  not  have  been  easy  to  find 
cause  of  disagreement  between  them.  There  are 
men  and  women  not  a  few  who  find  their  com- 
plement in  their  contrast;  but  of  such  were  not 
William  and  Griselda.  Their  standard  of  con- 
duct was  rigid  and  their  views  were  pronounced; 
those  who  did  not  share  their  views  and  act  in 
conformity  with  their  standards  were  outside  the 

23 


24      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

pale  of  their  liking.  And  this  not  because  they 
were  abnormally  or  essentially  uncharitable,  but 
because  they  had  lived  for  so  long  less  as  indi- 
viduals than  as  members  of  organizations  —  a 
form  of  existence  which  will  end  by  sucking  char- 
ity out  of  the  sweetest  heart  alive. 

It  was  well  for  them,  therefore,  that  their  creed, 
like  their  code  of  manners  and  morals,  was  identi- 
cal or  practically  identical.  It  was  a  simple  creed 
and  they  held  to  it  loyally  and  faithfully.  They 
believed  in  a  large,  vague  and  beautifully  unde- 
fined identity,  called  by  William  the  People,  and 
by  Griselda,  Woman;  who  in  the  time  to  come 
was  to  accomplish  much  beautiful  and  undefined 
Good;  and  in  whose  service  they  were  prepared 
meanwhile  to  suffer  any  amount  of  obloquy  and 
talk  any  amount  of  nonsense.  They  believed  that 
Society  could  be  straightened  and  set  right  by  the 
well-meaning  efforts  of  well-meaning  souls  like 
themselves  —  aided  by  the  Ballot,  the  Voice  of 
the  People,  and  Woman.  They  believed,  in  de- 
fiance of  the  teachings  of  history,  that  Democracy 
is  another  word  for  peace  and  goodwill  towards 
men.  They  believed  (quite  rightly)  in  the  purity 
of  their  own  intentions;  and  concluded  (quite 
wrongly)  that  the  intentions  of  all  persons  who 
did  not  agree  with  them  must  therefore  be  evil 
and  impure.  .  .  .  They  were,  in  short,  very 
honest  and  devout  sectarians  —  cocksure,  con- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      25 

temptuous,  intolerant,  self-sacrificing  after  the 
manner  of  their  kind. 

They  held,  as  I  have  said,  to  their  own  opin- 
ions strongly  and  would  have  died  rather  than 
renounce,  or  seem  to  renounce,  them  —  which  did 
not  restrain  them  from  resenting  the  same  attitude 
of  mind  and  heart  in  others.  What  in  themselves 
they  admired  as  loyalty,  they  denounced  in  others 
as  interested  and  malignant  stubbornness.  More 
—  it  did  not  prevent  them  from  disliking  and  de- 
Ispising  many  excellent  persons  whose  opinions,  if 
analyzed,  would  have  proved  nearly  akin  to  their 
own.  William,  for  instance,  would  all  but  foam 
at  the  mouth  when  compulsory  service  in  the  army 
was  the  subject  of  conversation,  and  "  militarism," 
to  him,  was  the  blackest  of  all  the  works  of  the 
devil;  but  he  was  bitter,  and  violently  bitter, 
against  the  blackleg  who  objected  to  compulsory 
service  in  a  Trade  Union,  and  had  spoken,  times 
without  number,  in  hearty  encouragement  of  that 
form  of  siege  warfare  which  is  commonly  known 
as  a  Strike.  He  was  a  pacifist  of  the  type  which 
seeks  peace  and  ensues  it  by  insisting  firmly,  and 
even  to  blood,  that  it  is  the  other  side's  duty  to 
give  way. 

Griselda  also  was  a  pacifist  —  when  it  suited 
her  and  when  she  had  got  her  way.  She  believed 
in  a  future  World- Amity,  brought  about  chiefly 
by  Woman;  meanwhile,  she  exulted  loudly  and 


26      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

frequently  in  the  fighting  qualities  of  her  sex. 
Like  William,  she  had  no  quarrel  with  Conti- 
nental nations ;  on  the  contrary,  what  she  had  seen 
of  Continental  nations  during  a  fortnight's  stay 
at  Interlaken  had  inclined  her  to  look  on  them 
with  favor.  Like  William,  her  combatant  in- 
stincts were  concentrated  on  antagonists  nearer 
home;  she  knew  them  better  and  therefore  dis- 
liked them  more.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
either  nations  or  individuals  will  necessarily  like 
the  people  they  see  most  of;  if  you  must  know  a 
man  in  order  to  love  him,  you  seldom  hate  a  man 
with  whom  you  have  not  acquaintance.  Nothing 
could  have  been  more  ideally  peaceful  than  the 
relations  of  China  and  England  during  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  —  for  the  simple  reason  that  China  and 
England  knew  absolutely  nothing  of  each  other. 
In  the  same  way,  if  in  a  lesser  degree,  Griselda 
and  William  had  a  friendly  feeling  for  Germany 
and  the  German  people.  They  had  never  been 
to  Germany  and  knew  nothing  of  her  history  or 
politics;  but  they  had  heard  of  the  Germans  as 
intelligent  people  addicted  to  spectacles,  beer  and 
sonatas,  and  established  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhine. 
And  —  the  Rhine  being  some  way  off  —  they 
liked  them. 

As  internationalists  they  had  no  words  too 
strong  for  standing  armies  and  their  methods; 
but  upon  military  operations  against  domestic 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      27 

tyrants  they  looked  with  less  disapproval.  There 
existed,  I  believe,  in  the  back  of  their  minds  some 
ill-defined  distinction  between  bloodshed  per- 
petrated by  persons  clad  in  uniform  and  by  per- 
sons not  so  clad  —  between  fighting  with  bayonets 
and  fighting  with  bombs  and  brickbats.  The  one 
was  militarism  and  unjustifiable;  the  other  heroism 
and  holy.  Had  you  been  unkind  enough  to  pen 
them  into  a  corner  and  force  them  to  acknowledge 
that  there  are  many  born  warriors  out  of  khaki, 
they  would  have  ended  probably  by  declaring  that 
one  should  take  arms  only  against  tyranny  and  in 
a  righteous  cause  —  and  so  have  found  themselves 
in  entire  agreement  not  only  with  their  adversary 
but  with  the  Tory  Party,  the  German  Emperor, 
the  professional  soldier  and  poor  humanity  in  gen- 
eral. The  elect,  when  one  comes  to  examine 
them,  are  not  always  so  very  elect.  The  difficulty 
would  have  been  to  persuade  them  that  there  could 
be  two  opinions  concerning  a  cause  they  espoused; 
their  little  vision  was  as  narrow  as  it  was  pure, 
and  their  little  minds  were  so  seldom  exhausted 
by  thinking.  Apostles  of  the  reign  of  Woman 
and  of  International  Amity,  they  might  have  been 
summed  up  as  the  perfect  type  of  aggressor. 

With  regard  to  what  used  to  be  called  culture 
(before  August,  1914),  the  attainments  of  Wil- 
liam and  Griselda  were  very  much  on  a  level. 
They  read  newspapers  written  by  persons  who 


28      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

wholly  agreed  with  their  views;  they  read 
pamphlets  issued,  and  books  recommended,  by  so- 
cieties of  which  they  were  members.  From  these 
they  quoted,  in  public  and  imposingly,  with  ab- 
solute faith  in  their  statements.  Of  history  and 
science,  of  literature  and  art,  they  knew  nothing, 
or  next  to  nothing;  and,  their  ignorance  being 
mutual,  neither  bored  the  other  by  straying  away 
from  the  subjects  in  which  both  were  interested. 
...  As  I  have  said,  their  mating  was  an  ideal 
mating. 

The  period  of  their  engagement  was  not  with- 
out its  beauty;  an  ever-present  consciousness  of 
their  mission  to  mankind  did  not  prevent  them 
from  being  blissful  as  loving  young  couples  are 
blissful  —  it  merely  colored  their  relations  and 
spiritualized  them.  One  evening,  not  long  before 
their  wedding,  they  sat  together  in  Battersea  Park 
on  a  bench  and  dedicated  their  mutual  lives  to  the 
service  of  Progress  and  Humanity.  They  had 
invented  a  suitable  formula  for  the  occasion  and 
repeated  it  softly,  one  after  the  other,  holding 
each  other's  hands.  Griselda's  voice  trembled  as 
she  vowed,  in  semi-ecclesiastical  phraseology,  that 
not  even  her  great  love  for  William  should  wean 
her  from  her  life's  work ;  and  William's  voice  shook 
back  as  he  vowed  in  his  turn  that  not  even  Gri- 
selda,  the  woman  of  his  dreams,  should  make  him 
neglectful  of  the  call  of  Mankind  and  his  duty  to 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      29 

the  holiest  of  causes.  It  was  a  very  solemn  little 
moment;  man  and  woman,  affianced  lovers,  they 
dedicated  themselves  to  their  mission,  the  uplift- 
ing of  the  human  race.  They  were  spared  the 
doubts  which  would  have  assailed  wiser  heads  as 
to  the  manner  of  accomplishing  their  mission;  and 
as  they  sat  side  by  side  on  the  bench,  with  their 
hands  clasped,  they  knew  themselves  for  accept- 
able types  and  forerunners  of  the  world  they  were 
helping  to  create.  .  .  .  Man  and  Woman,  side 
by  side,  vowed  to  service. 

'  We  shall  never  forget  this  evening,"  Griselda 
whispered  as  the  sun  dipped  down  in  glory.  "  In 
all  our  lives  there  can  be  nothing  more  beautiful 
than  this." 

She  was  right;  the  two  best  gifts  of  life  are 
love  and  an  approving  conscience.  These  twain, 
William  and  Griselda,  loved  each  other  sincerely 
—  if  not  with  the  tempestuous  passion  of  a  Romeo 
and  a  Juliet,  with  an  honest  and  healthy  affection; 
they  had  for  each  other  an  attraction  which  could 
set  their  pulses  beating  and  start  them  dreaming 
dreams.  That  evening,  on  the  bench  in  Batter- 
sea  Park,  they  had  dreamed  their  dreams  —  while 
their  consciences  looked  on  and  smiled.  They 
foreshadowed  their  home  not  only  as  a  nest  where 
they  two  and  their  children  should  dwell,  but  as 
a  center  of  light  and  duty  —  as  they  understood 
duty  and  light;  a  meeting-place  for  the  like- 


30      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

minded,  where  fresh  courage  could  be  gathered 
for  the  strife  with  prejudice  and  evil.  They  pic- 
tured themselves  (this  was  in  June,  1914)  as  what 
they  would  have  called  Powers  —  as  a  man  and 
a  woman  working  for  progress  and  destined  to 
leave  their  mark.  The  sense  of  their  destiny 
awed  and  elated  them  —  and  they  walked  away 
from  Battersea  Park  with  their  hearts  too  full  for 
speech. 

On  the  way  home  a  flaring  headline  distracted 
Griselda  temporarily  from  her  dreams.  ;'  Who's 
this  Archduke  that's  been  assassinated?"  she 
asked.  (Her  morning's  reading  had  been  con- 
fined to  The  Suffragette.) 

"  Austrian,"  William  informed  her.  (He  had 
read  the  Daily  Herald.)  "  Franz  Joseph  —  no, 
Franz  Ferdinand  —  the  heir  to  the  Austrian 
throne." 

"Who  assassinated  him?"  his  betrothed  in- 
quired, not  very  much  interested. 

"  I  can't  remember  their  names,"  William  ad- 
mitted, "  but  there  seem  to  have  been  several  in 
it.  Anyhow,  he's  been  assassinated.  Some- 
where in  the  Balkans.  With  bombs." 

"  Oh!  "  said  Griselda,  ceasing  to  be  interested 
at  all.  Her  mind  had  turned  from  traffic  in 
strange  archdukes  and  was  running  on  a  high  re- 
solve; the  solemn  vow  of  service  was  translating 
itself  into  action. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      31 

"  I  shall  go  to  the  meeting  to-morrow,"  she  an- 
nounced, "  and  make  my  protest." 

William  knew  what  was  passing  in  her  mind 
and  made  no  effort  to  dissuade  her.  No  more 
than  she  dared  he  let  their  mutual  happiness  en- 
ervate them  —  it  must  urge  them  to  high  en- 
deavor, to  struggle  and  sacrifice  for  the  Cause. 

"  I'll  go  too,"  he  said  simply,  "  if  I  can  manage 
to  get  a  ticket." 

"  Oh,  I'll  get  you  a  ticket,"  Griselda  told  him; 
"  they're  sure  to  'have  some  at  the  office  " —  and 
thanked  him  with  a  squeeze  of  the  fingers  that  set 
his  pulses  beating. 

She  was  as  good  as  her  word,  and  the  next 
night  saw  him  in  a  Cabinet  Minister's  audience. 
From  his  seat  in  the  arena  (their  seats  were  not 
together  and  the  pair  had  entered  separately)  his 
eye  sought  for  Griselda  and  found  her  easily  in 
the  first  row  of  the  balcony  —  most  obviously 
composed  and  with  her  gloved  hands  folded  on 
the  rail.  She  was  dressed  in  pale  blue,  with  a 
flowered  toque  perched  on  her  head;  her  blue  silk 
blouse,  in  view  of  possibilities,  was  firmly  con- 
nected by  safety-pins  with  the  belt  of  her  blue  cloth 
skirt,  and  her  hair  secured  more  tightly  than  usual 
by  an  extra  allowance  of  combs.  Previous  ex- 
perience had  taught  her  the  wisdom  of  these  meas- 
ures. As  usual,  in  accordance  with  the  tradition 
of  her  party,  she  had  insisted  in  her  costume  on 


32      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

the  ultra-feminine  note;  her  blouse  savored  of 
Liberty  and  there  was  a  cluster  of  rosebuds  at 
her  breast.  She  was  breathing  quickly,  so  her 
mouth  was  more  open  than  usual;  otherwise  she 
gave  no  sign  of  mental  or  physical  trepidation  — 
save  a  studied  indifference  which  might  have  be- 
trayed her  to  an  eye  sufficiently  acute.  To  Wil- 
liam she  looked  adorable  and  his  heart  swelled 
with  admiration  of  her  courage  and  determina- 
tion to  sustain  her  in  her  protest  to  the  utter- 
most; he  vowed  to  himself  to  be  worthy  of  such  a 
mate. 

He  did  his  best  to  prove  himself  worthy  when 
the  critical  moment  came.  He  waited  for  that 
moment  during  more  than  three-quarters  of  an 
hour  —  for  Griselda  was  not  without  confeder- 
ates, and  three  ladies  in  picture  hats  and  a  gentle- 
man in  the  garb  of  a  Nonconformist  minister  had 
arisen  at  intervals  to  make  the  running  before  her 
voice  rang  out.  All  were  suppressed,  though  not 
without  excitement;  two  of  the  ladies  parted  with 
their  hats  and  the  clergyman  broke  a  chair.  The 
chair  and  the  clergyman  having  been  alike  re- 
moved, the  audience  buzzed  down  into  silence, 
and  for  full  five  minutes  there  was  peace  —  until 
the  speaker  permitted  himself  a  jesting  allusion 
to  the  recently  exported  objectors.  A  man  with 
a  steward's  rosette  in  his  coat  was  stationed  in 
the  gangway  close  to  William;  and  as  the  laugh- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      33 

ter  the  jest  had  provoked  died  away,  he  swore 
under  his  breath,  "  By  God,  there's  another  in 
the  balcony!  "  William  swung  round,  saw  Gri- 
selda  on  her  feet  and  heard  her  voice  shrill  out 

—  to   him   an  inspiration  and  a   clarion,   to  the 
steward  a  source  of  profanity. 

"  Mr.  Chairman,  I  rise  to  protest  against  the 
speaker's  gross  insult  to  the  noble  women 
who " 

A  man  in  the  seat  behind  clapped  his  hands  on 
her  shoulders  and  rammed  her  back  into  her  chair 

—  where    she    writhed    vigorously,    calling    him 
coward  and  demanding  how  he  dared !     His  grip, 
sufficiently  hard  to  be  unpleasant,  roused  her  fight- 
ing instincts  and  gave  a  fillip  to  her  conscientious 
protest;   in  contact  with   actual,   if  not  painful, 
personal  violence,  she  found  it  easier  to  scream, 
hit   out   and   struggle.     Two   stewards,   starting 
from  either  end  of  the  row  of  chairs,  were  wedg- 
ing themselves  towards  her;  she  clung  to  her  seat 
with  fingers  and  toes,  and  shrieked  a  regulation 
formula  which  the  meeting  drowned  in   oppro- 
brium.    Conscious    of    rectitude,    the   jeers    and 
hoots  but  encouraged  her  and  fired  her  blood;  and 
when  her  hands  were  wrenched  from  their  hold  on 
the  chair  she  clung  and  clawed  to  the  shoulder  of 
her  next-door  neighbor  —  a  stout  and  orthodox 
Liberal  who  thrust  her  from  him,   snorting  in- 
dignation.    One  steward  had  her  gripped  under 


34      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

the  armpits,  the  other  with  difficulty  mastered  her 
active  ankles;  and,  wriggling  like  a  blue  silk  eel 
and  crowing  her  indefatigable  protest,  she  was 
bundled  in  rapid  and  business-like  fashion  to  a 
side  entrance  of  the  building. 

"  Cowards!  "  she  ejaculated  as  she  found  her 
feet  on  the  pavement. 

"Damned  little  cat!"  was  the  ungentlemanly 
rejoinder.  "  If  you  come  here  again  I'll  pare 
your  nasty  little  nails  for  you." 

And,  dabbing  a  scored  left  hand  with  his  hand- 
kerchief, the  steward  returned  to  his  duties  — 
leaving  Griselda  in  the  center  of  a  jocular  crowd 
attracted  to  the  spot  by  several  previous  ejec- 
tions. She  was  minus  her  rosebuds,  her  toque  and 
quite  half  of  her  hairpins;  on  the  other  hand,  she 
held  tightly  grasped  in  her  fingers  a  crumpled  silk 
necktie  which  had  once  been  the  property  of  a 
stout  and  orthodox  Liberal.  She  was  conscious 
that  she  had  acted  with  perfect  dignity  as  well  as 
with  unusual  courage  —  and  that  consciousness, 
combined  with  her  experience  of  similar  situations, 
enabled  her  to  sustain  with  calm  contempt  the  at- 
tentions of  the  jocular  crowd. 

"  You'd  like  a  taxi,  I  suppose,  miss?"  the  con- 
stable on  duty  suggested  —  having  also  consider- 
able experience  of  similar  situations.  Griselda 
assented  and  the  taxi  was  duly  hailed.  Before  it 
arrived  at  the  curb  she  was  joined  on  the  pave- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      35 

ment  by  her  lover,  who  had  left  the  meeting  by 
the  same  door  as  his  betrothed  and  in  much  the 
same  manner  and  condition;  he  had  parted  with  a 
shoe  as  well  as  a  hat,  and  one  of  his  braces  was 
broken.  A  hearty  shove  assisted  him  down  the 
steps  to  the  pavement  where,  to  the  applause  of 
the  unthinking  multitude,  he  fell  on  his  knees  in 
an  attitude  of  adoration  before  Griselda's  friend 
the  constable.  Recovering  his  equilibrium,  he 
would  have  turned  again  to  the  assault;  but  his 
game  attempt  to  reenter  the  building  was  frus- 
trated not  only  by  a  solidly  extended  arm  of  the 
law  but  by  the  intervention  of  Griselda  herself. 

"  You  have  done  enough  for  to-night,  dear," 
she  whispered,  taking  his  arm.  "  My  instructions 
are  not  to  insist  on  arrest.  We  have  made  our 
protest  —  we  can  afford  to  withdraw." 

She  led  the  retreat  to  the  taxi  with  a  dignity 
born  of  practice;  William,  now  conscious  of  his 
snapped  brace,  following  with  less  deportment. 
The  vehicle  once  clear  of  the  jeering  crowd,  Gri- 
selda put  her  arms  round  her  lover  and  kissed  his 
forehead  solemnly. 

"  My  dear  one,"  she  said,  "  I  am  proud  of 
you." 

"  Oh,  Griselda,  I'm  proud  of  you,"  he  mur- 
mured between  their  kisses.  "  How  brave  you 
are  —  how  wonderful  —  how  dared  they!  .  .  . 
I  went  nearly  mad  when  I  saw  them  handling  you 


36      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

—  I  hit  out,  and  the  cowards  knocked  me  down. 
...  A  woman  raising  her  voice  on  the  side  of 
justice  —  and  they  silence  her  with  brutal  vio- 
lence   " 

"  It's  only  what  we  must  expect,  dear,"  she 
whispered  back,  stroking  his  rumpled  hair.  "  Re- 
member this  is  War  —  God  knows  it's  horrible, 
but  we  must  not  shrink  from  it." 

She  spoke  from  her  heart,  from  the  profound 
ignorance  of  the  unread  and  unimaginative  .  .  . 
and  once  more  in  the  darkness  of  the  taxi  the 
warriors  clasped  and  kissed. 


CHAPTER  III 

AFTER  the  usual  hesitations  and  excursions 
they  had  settled  on  their  future  home  — 
a  tiny  flat  in  Bloomsbury,  central  and 
handy  for  the  perpetual  getting  about  to  meetings 
which  was  so  integral  a  part  of  their  well-filled, 
bustling  lives.  They  furnished  it  lovingly  and 
with  what  they  considered  good  taste;  Griselda 
brought  in  her  friends  to  admire,  and  engaged  a 
respectable  woman  who  was  to  "  do  "  for  them 
and  have  all  in  readiness  when  they  returned  from 
their  four  weeks'  honeymoon  —  and  they  were  as 
foolishly  happy  over  their  nest  as  any  other  loving 
little  couple. 

They  were  married  towards  the  end  of  July  — 
to  be  exact,  on  the  twenty-third  day  of  the  month. 
The  wedding  took  place  in  Balham  from  the  house 
of  Griselda's  aunt;  the  ceremony  was  performed 
by  an  enlightened  vicar  who  had  consented  to 
omit  the  ignoble  vow  of  obedience ;  and  the  church 
was  thronged  to  its  doors  with  comrades  and  ar- 
dent sympathizers.  The  advanced  Press  spread 
itself  over  the  description  of  the  ceremony  and 

37 


38      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

—  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  bridesmaids,  six  in 
number,  had  all  done  time  for  assault  —  even  the 
Press  that  was  not  advanced  considered  the  event 
worth  a  paragraph.  The  pair  were  snapshotted 
on  leaving  the  church  with  the  customary  direful 
results,  and  the  modest  residence  of  Griselda's 
aunt  could  hardly  accommodate  the  flood  of  pro- 
gressive guests.  There  was  rice  and  slipper- 
throwing  and  a  whirl  of  good  wishes  —  and  Gri- 
selda,  flushed,  looked  pretty,  and  in  William's 
eyes  quite  lovely. 

They  left  by  an  afternoon  train  for  Dover  and 
crossed  the  next  day  to  Ostend. 

Their  selection  of  the  Belgian  Ardennes  for  a 
honeymoon  was  due  to  Griselda's  long-standing 
acquaintance  with  a  cosmopolitan  female  revolu- 
tionist understood  to  be  of  Russian  Polish  extrac- 
tion. Owing,  it  was  further  understood,  to  her 
pronounced  opinions  and  pronounced  manner  of 
expressing  them,  she  had  long  ceased  to  be  wel- 
come in  the  land  that  gave  her  birth;  at  any  rate, 
she  avoided  it  studiously  and  existed  chiefly  at  a 
series  of  epoch-making  revolutionary  meetings 
which  she  addressed  by  turns  in  bad  German, 
worse  French,  and  worst  English.  She  wrote 
vehement  pamphlets  in  all  these  languages  and 
prided  herself  on  the  fact  that,  on  the  Continent 
at  least,  they  were  frequently  suppressed  by  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      39 

police;  wore  tartan  blouses,  a  perennial  smile,  and 
a  hat  that  was  always  askew.  For  some  reason 
or  another  she  was  the  possessor  of  a  cottage  in 
the  heart  of  the  Belgian  Ardennes  —  which  she 
visited  on  the  rare  occasions  when  she  was  not 
plying  her  epoch-making  activities  in  London, 
Vienna,  or  New  York.  A  week  once  a  year  was 
about  all  the  use  she  made  of  it  —  reappearing 
after  her  seven  days'  seclusion  with  a  brace  of  new 
pamphlets  burning  for  the  Press,  and  like  a  giant 
refreshed  for  the  fight.  This  estimable  woman 
was  as  good-natured  as  she  was  revolutionary, 
and  hearing  that  Griselda  was  thinking  of  a  rural 
honeymoon,  she  hastened  to  offer  the  happy  couple 
the  loan  of  her  Belgian  property,  which  was  as 
secluded  as  heart  could  desire.  Griselda,  since 
her  fortnight  at  Interlaken,  had  hankered  for  an- 
other stay  abroad;  she  jumped  at  the  offer,  and 
William  —  whose  acquaintance  with  foreign  parts 
was  limited  to  an  International  Socialist  Congress 
in  Holland  —  jumped  gladly  in  unison  with  her. 
Madame  Amberg  beamed  with  joy  at  their  de- 
lighted acceptance  of  her  offer;  she  kissed  Gri- 
selda, shook  hands  with  William  and  promised  to 
make  all  the  necessary  arrangements  for  their 
stay  —  to  write  to  the  old  woman  who  looked 
after  the  cottage  and  tell  her  when  to  expect  them. 
She  babbled  rhapsodically  of  honeymoons  and  the 
joys  of  the  Forest  of  Arden  —  forgetting  how 


40      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

bored  she  was  in  the  Forest  of  Arden  at  the  end 
of  a  seven-days'  stay  there  —  and  further  directed 
them  how  to  reach  it,  looked  out  trains  and  sug- 
gested hotels. 

Heaven  smiled  on  the  opening  of  their  married 
life;  Dover  was  a  receding  beauty  in  the  distance 
and  the  Channel  a  good-natured  lake.  As  their 
boat  chunked  between  the  long  piers  of  Ostend 
they  held  and  squeezed  each  other's  hands  ecstati- 
cally, the  crowd  collecting  on  the  gangway  side 
enabling  them  to  do  so  unnoticed.  The  conscious- 
ness of  their  total  ignorance  of  the  language  of 
the  country  gave  them  an  agitated  moment  as 
they  set  foot  on  foreign  soil  —  but,  taken  in  tow 
by  a  polyglot  porter,  they  were  safely  transferred 
from  the  quay  to  a  second-class  carriage,  with  in- 
structions to  change  at  Brussels;  and,  having 
changed  obediently,  were  in  due  course  set  down 
at  Namur.  Madame  Amberg  had  advised  them 
to  lodge  with  economy  at  the  Hotel  de  Hollande 
near  the  station;  but  another  specimen  of  the 
polyglot  porter  pounced  down  and  annexed  them 
firmly  for  his  own  more  distant  establishment,  and 
after  a  feeble  resistance  they  followed  him  meekly 
and  were  thrust  with  their  bags  into  the  omnibus 
lying  in  wait  for  them.  They  felt  it  their  duty 
as  the  vehicle  rattled  them  along  to  make  a  few 
depreciatory  and  high-principled  remarks  on  the 
subject  of  the  towering  fortifications;  but  having 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      41 

thus  satisfied  their  consciences  they  relapsed  into 
mere  enjoyment  of  rest,  novelty,  a  good  dinner, 
and  a  view  of  the  lazy  Meuse.  After  dinner, 
when  the  fortress  above  them  was  fading  into  the 
soft  blackness  of  a  warm  summer  night,  they 
walked  arm-in-arm  by  the  river  and  were  quite 
unutterably  happy. 

They  rose  early  in  the  morning  to  catch  the 
little  river  boat  for  Dinant;  caught  it  with  the 
aid  of  their  guardian,  the  porter,  and  camped  side 
by  side  on  its  deck  to  enjoy  the  sauntering  trip. 
They  enjoyed  it  so  much  and  engrossingly  that 
for  the  space  of  a  morning  they  forgot  their  high 
principles,  they  forgot  even  Woman  and  Democ- 
racy; they  were  tourists  only,  agape  and  delighted, 
with  their  green  Cook's  tickets  in  their  pockets. 
Yet,  after  all,  they  were  something  more  than 
tourists;  they  were  young  man  and  woman  who 
loved  each  other  tenderly  and  whose  happy  lives 
were  in  tune  with  the  happy  landscape.  Often 
they  forgot  to  look  at  the  happy  landscape  for 
the  joy  of  gazing  into  each  other's  dear  blue  eyes. 

The  boat  puffed  finally  to  Dinant,  where  they 
stayed  the  night  as  planned;  where  they  stared  at 
the  cupolaed  church  and  the  cliffs,  walked  to  the 
split  rock  on  the  road  to  Anseremme,  and  bought 
some  of  the  gingerbread  their  guide-book  had  told 
them  to  buy.  They  ate  it  next  day,  with  no  par- 
ticular approval,  on  the  final  stage  of  their 


42      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

journey,  in  a  train  that  puffed  and  pottered  be- 
tween heights  and  orchards  in  the  winding  com- 
pany of  a  stream.  It  puffed  and  pottered  them 
at  last  to  their  wayside  destination  —  where  a 
smiling  and  loutish  country  boy  slouched  up  to 
take  possession  of  them  and  their  modest  baggage. 
They  understood  not  a  word  of  his  thick-throated 
patois,  but  knew  from  information  imparted  be- 
forehand by  Madame  Amberg  that  this  was  their 
housekeeper's  grandson  and  deputed  to  serve  as 
their  guide.  He  gripped  a  bag  easily  in  either 
hand,  and  led  the  way  past  the  few  small  houses 
ranged  neatly  as  a  miniature  village  alongside  the 
miniature  station  —  and  so  by  the  white  road  that 
kept  the  river  company.  After  a  mile  or  there- 
about they  left  the  white  road,  turning  sharply  to 
the  right  at  a  cleft  in  the  riverside  cliff  and  strik- 
ing a  cart-track,  scarcely  more  than  a  path,  into 
a  valley  twisted  back  among  the  hills. 

It  was  a  valley  the  like  of  which  they  had  never 
seen,  which  the  world  seemed  to  have  forgotten; 
a  cool  green  vision  of  summer  and  solitary  peace. 
Water  had  cleft  in  the  table-land  above  them  a 
passage  that  time  had  made  leafy  and  gracious 
and  laid  aside  for  their  finding.  Through  the 
flat,  lush  pastures  that  divided  the  bold  slopes 
there  looped  and  tangled  a  tiny  brook  on  its  way 
to  the  Meuse  and  the  sea,  a  winding  ribbon  of 
shadow,  of  shimmer  and  reflection.  Up  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      43 

slopes  rising  steeply  from  the  pastures  there 
clustered  tree  above  tree  —  so  thickly  set  that 
where  the  valley  dwindled  in  the  distance  they 
might  have  been  moss  on  the  hill-side.  There 
was  no  one  in  sight  and  no  sound  but  their  foot- 
steps and  the  birds;  it  was  all  a  green  prettiness 
given  over  to  birds  and  themselves. 

"  Isn't  it  wonderful?  "  Griselda  said,  not  know- 
ing that  her  voice  had  dropped  and  lost  its  shrill- 
ness. "  I  never  thought  there  could  be  such  a 
place." 

She  spoke  the  truth,  if  in  hackneyed  and  un- 
thinking phrase;  in  her  busy  and  crowded  little 
mind,  the  reflection  of  her  busy  little  life,  there 
had  been  no  room  for  visions  of  a  deep  and  soli- 
tary peace.  Involuntarily,  as  they  walked  they 
drew  nearer  together  and  went  closely  side  by 
side;  the  sweet  aloofness  of  the  valley  not  only 
amazed  them,  it  awed  them ;  they  were  dimly  con- 
scious of  being  in  contact  with  something  which 
in  its  silent,  gracious  way  was  disquieting  as  well 
as  beautiful.  Their  theory  and  practice  of  life, 
so  far,  was  the  theory  and  practice  of  their  purely 
urban  environment,  of  crowds,  committees  and 
grievances  and  cocksure  little  people  like  them- 
selves —  and  lo,  out  of  an  atmosphere  of  cock- 
sureness  and  hustle  they  had  stepped,  as  it  seemed 
without  warning,  into  one  of  mystery  and  the  end- 
less patience  of  the  earth.  Out  here,  in  this 


44      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

strange  overpowering  peace,  it  was  difficult  to  be 
conscious  of  grievances  political  or  ethical;  in- 
stead came  a  new,  undefined  and  uneasy  sense  of 
personal  inadequacy  and  shrinkage,  a  sense  of  the 
unknown  and  hitherto  unallowed-for,  a  fear  of 
something  undreamed  of  in  their  rabid  and  sec- 
ond-hand philosophy.  .  .  .  Not  that  they  rea- 
soned after  this  fashion,  or  were  capable  of  an- 
alyzing the  source  of  the  tremor  that  mingled 
with  their  physical  pleasure,  their  sheer  delight  of 
the  eye;  but  before  they  had  been  in  the  valley 
many  hours  they  sympathized  in  secret  (they  did 
not  know  why)  with  Madame  Amberg's  consis- 
tent avoidance  of  its  loveliness,  saw  hazily  and 
without  comprehension  why,  for  all  her  praise  of 
its  beauties,  she  was  so  loth  to  dwell  there.  The 
place,  though  they  knew  it  not,  was  a  New  Idea 
to  them  —  and  therefore  a  shadow  of  terror  to 
their  patterned  and  settled  convictions.  As  such 
their  organized  and  regulated  minds  shrank  from 
it  at  once  and  instinctively  —  cautiously  appre- 
hensive lest  the  New  Idea  should  tamper  with 
accepted  beliefs,  disturb  established  views  and  call 
generally  for  the  exercise  of  faculties  hitherto 
unused.  They  had  an  uneasy  foreboding  — 
never  mentioned  aloud  by  either,  though  troublous 
to  both  —  that  long  contact  with  solitude  and 
beauty  might  end  by  confusing  issues  that  once 
were  plain,  and  so  unfitting  them  for  the  work  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      45 

Progress  and  Humanity  —  for  committees,  agi- 
tations, the  absorbing  of  pamphlets  and  the  gen- 
eral duty  of  rearranging  the  universe. 

There  was  something,  probably,  in  the  frame 
of  mind  in  which  they  approached  the  valley;  they 
came  of  a  migratory,  holiday  race,  and  had  seen 
green  beauty  before,  if  only  fleetingly  and  at  in- 
tervals. What  they  had  lacked  before  was  the 
insight  into  beauty  born  of  their  own  hearts'  con- 
tent, the  wonder  created  by  their  own  most  happy 
love.  .  .  .  They  followed  their  guide  for  the 
most  part  in  silence,  relieved  that  he  had  ceased 
his  well-meaning  attempts  to  make  them  under- 
stand his  jargon,  and  speaking,  when  they  spoke 
at  all,  in  voices  lowered  almost  to  a  whisper. 

"What's  that?"  Griselda  queried,  still  under 
her  breath.  "  That  "  was  a  flash  of  blue  fire 
ahead  of  them  darting  slantwise  over  the  stream. 
Later  they  learned  to  understand  that  a  flash  of 
blue  fire  meant  kingfisher;  but  for  the  moment 
William  shook  his  head,  nonplused,  and  haz- 
arded only,  "  It's  a  bird." 

For  half-an-hour  or  so  it  was  only  the  birds 
and  themselves;  then  at  a  turn  in  the  narrowing 
valley  they  came  in  sight  of  cows  nuzzling  the 
pastures.  Several  cows,  parti-colored  black  and 
white  like  the  cows  of  a  Noah's  Ark;  and,  further 
on,  a  tiny  farmhouse  standing  close  up  to  the 
trees  in  its  patch  of  vegetable  garden.  They 


46      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

knew  from  Madame  Amberg  of  the  existence  of 
the  tiny  farmhouse;  it  was  an  old  woman  living 
there  who  would  "  do  "  for  them  during  their 
stay  at  the  neighboring  cottage  —  cook  and  clean 
and  make  tidy  in  return  for  a  moderate  wage. 
The  barking  of  a  kenneled  nondescript  brought 
the  old  woman  shuffling  to  the  door  —  to  wel- 
come them  (presumably)  in  her  native  tongue 
and  to  take  their  measure  from  head  to  heel  with 
a  pair  of  shrewd,  sunken  eyes.  Of  her  verbal 
greetings  they  understood  nothing  but  the  men- 
tion of  Madame  Amberg;  but,  having  looked 
them  up  and  down  enough,  the  old  lady  shuffled 
back  into  her  kitchen  for  the  key  of  the  revolu- 
tionist's property.  She  reappeared  with  the  key 
in  one  hand  and  a  copper  stewpan  in  the  other  — 
wherewith  she  waved  the  signal  to  advance,  and 
shuffled  off  in  guidance,  ahead  of  her  grandson 
and  the  visitors.  A  quarter  of  an  hour's  more 
walking  on  a  dwindling  path  brought  them  in 
sight  of  their  sylvan  honeymoon  abode;  it  had 
originally  been  built  for  the  use  of  a  woodman, 
and  was  a  four-roomed  cottage  on  the  edge  of  the 
wood  overlooking  the  stream  and  the  pasture  of 
the  black-and-white  cows.  Madame  Peys  (they 
knew  at  least  her  name)  unlocked  the  door  and 
ushered  them  into  the  kitchen,  where  the  boy  de- 
posited their  bags. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  cottage  was  what  any  one  who  knew 
Madame  Amberg  might  have  expected 
her  cottage  to  be.  It  was  sparsely  fur- 
nished, except  with  explosive  literature;  there 
were  very  few  chairs,  and  those  few  verging  on 
decrepitude,  but  numerous  tracts  and  pamphlets 
in  divers  civilized  languages.  Kitchen  utensils 
were  conspicuous  chiefly  by  their  absence,  and 
presumably  the  owner  relied  consistently  on  the 
loan  of  the  copper  stewpan  which  had  accom- 
panied her  guests  from  the  farm.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  kitchen  walls  were  adorned  by  photo- 
graphs, more  or  less  fly-blown,  of  various  political 
extremists,  and  a  signed  presentment  of  Rosa 
Luxemburg  adorned  a  bedroom  mantelpiece. 

While  Madame  Peys  made  play  with  the  stew- 
pan  and  a  kettle,  the  honeymoon  couple  unpacked 
their  bags  and  examined  their  new  domain:  still, 
to  a  certain  extent,  overawed  by  the  silence  and 
loneliness  around  it;  still,  unknown  to  themselves, 
speaking  more  gently  and  with  more  hesitation 
than  usual.  It  was  the  familiar  tang  of  the  books 

47 


48      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

and  pamphlets,  with  which  the  shelves  were 
crammed  and  the  floor  was  heaped,  that  first  re- 
vived their  quieted  spirits  and  created  a  sense  of 
home.  Woman  and  Democracy,  even  on  the 
backs  of  books,  had  power  to  act  as  a  tonic  and 
trumpet-call,  to  reflect  the  atmosphere  of  noise 
and  controversy  where  alone  they  could  breathe 
with  comfort.  With  unconscious  relief  they 
turned  from  the  window  and  the  prospect  of  the 
valley,  green  and  untenanted,  to  entrench  them- 
selves against  the  assaults  of  the  unknown  behind 
the  friendly  and  familiar  volumes  that  had  over- 
flowed from  Madame  Amberg's  deal  book-shelves 
to  Madame  Amberg's  uncarpeted  floor.  Con- 
ning them,  handling  them  and  turning  their  pages, 
they  were  again  on  the  solid  ground  of  impatient 
intolerance;  they  were  back  amongst  their  own, 
their  cherished  certainties.  William  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Belfort  Bax  felt  his  feet  once  more  be- 
neath him;  Griselda,  recognizing  a  pamphlet  by 
Christabel  Pankhurst,  ceased  to  be  troubled  by 
the  loneliness  around  her,  grew  animated  and 
raised  her  voice.  .  .  .  And  the  savory  mess  which 
Madame  produced  from  her  stewpan,  combined 
with  the  no  less  excellent  coffee  that  followed,  dis- 
pelled for  the  moment  the  sense  of  mystery  and 
the  shadow  of  the  New  Idea. 

The  shadow  obtruded  itself  more  than  once 
during  the  next  three  weeks  or  so;  but  on  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      49 

whole  they  managed  with  fair  success  to  be  in 
the  country  and  not  of  it  —  to  create  in  the  heart 
of  their  immemorial  valley  a  little  refuge  and 
atmosphere  of  truly  advanced  suburbia.  Their 
existence  in  the  Ardennes  valley  was  one  of  mutual 
affection  and  study  —  by  which  latter  term  they 
understood  principally  the  reading  of  books  they 
agreed  with.  From  the  cares  and  worries  of 
housekeeping  they  were  blissfully  and  entirely 
free;  Madame  Peys  did  their  catering,  taking  toll, 
no  doubt,  of  their  simplicity  and  ignorance  of 
French,  but  taking  it  with  tatt  and  discretion. 
Her  bills  were  a  weekly  trouble  to  Griselda  but 
not  on  account  of  their  length;  what  she  disliked 
was  the  embarrassing  moment  when  she  strove  to 
conceal  her  complete  ignorance  of  the  items  and 
difficulty  in  grasping  the  total  as  set  forth  in  un- 
English-looking  ciphers.  Their  tidying  was  also 
done  daily  and  adequately,  their  cooking  more 
than  adequately;  Madame  Peys  called  them  in 
the  morning,  set  the  house  to  rights  and  their 
various  meals  going,  and  looked  in  at  intervals 
during  the  day,  departing  for  the  last  time  when 
supper  was  cooked  and  laid.  Their  daily  doings 
fell  naturally  into  routine;  they  rose  of  a  morn- 
ing to  coffee  steaming  -on  the  stove ;  and,  having 
digested  their  breakfast,  they  usually  proceeded 
to  walk  a  little,  concluding  the  exercise  by  sitting 
under  the  trees  with  a  book  which  William  read 


50      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

aloud  to  Griselda.  They  lunched  sometimes  in 
picnic  fashion,  sometimes  at  home;  in  the  after- 
noon took  another  stroll  or  sat  at  home  reading, 
with  happy  little  interludes  of  talk.  On  two  or 
three  days  they  made  small  excursions  to  one  of 
the  neighboring  villages;  on  others  William,  with 
a  pen  and  a  frown  of  importance,  would  establish 
himself  at  the  table  after  lunch  was  cleared  away; 
he  had  a  tract  in  hand  on  the  Woman  Question, 
and  Griselda  gently  but  firmly  insisted  that  even 
in  the  first  ecstasy  of  their  honeymoon  he  should 
not  lay  it  aside.  Having  a  due  sense  of  the  value 
of  his  epoch-making  work,  he  did  not  require 
much  pressing;  and  while  he  frowned  and  scrib- 
bled and  frowned  and  paused,  she  would  sit  by 
reading,  and  now  and  again  glance  up  that  she 
might  meet  his  eye  and  smile.  Long  afterwards, 
months  afterwards,  when  he  had  forgotten  the 
epoch-making  work  and  all  he  had  meant  to  prove 
by  it,  he  would  remember  how  she  had  risen  and 
come  behind  him,  smoothing  and  fondling  his 
ruffled  hair  and  bending  over  to  kiss  him.  He 
would  drop  his  pen  and  lift  his  face  to  hers,  some- 
times in  silence  and  sometimes  murmuring  fool- 
ishness. 

In  time,  as  the  peaceful  days  crept  by,  they 
were  sorry  that,  yielding  to  a  romantic  impulse, 
they  had  directed  that  neither  paper  nor  letter 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      51 

should  be  forwarded  during  their  absence.  As 
a  result  of  this  prohibition  their  entire  cor- 
respondence while  they  stayed  in  the  valley  con- 
sisted of  one  picture-postcard  dispatched  by 
Madame  Amberg  from  Liverpool  at  the  moment 
of  her  embarkation  for  an  extended  lecture  tour 
in  the  States.  It  was  sent  three  days  after  their 
wedding,  and  expressed  exuberant  affection,  but 
was  singularly  lacking  in  news  of  the  outside 
world.  To  remove  the  prohibition  would  be  to 
confess  failure  and  suggest  boredom,  therefore 
neither  ventured  to  hint  at  it;  all  the  same,  they 
knew  in  their  secret  hearts  that  they  had  over- 
rated their  resourcefulness.  It  was  not  that  they 
palled  on  each  other — far  from  it;  but  part  at 
least  of  their  mutual  attraction  was  their  mutual 
interest  in  certain  subjects  and  limited  phases  of 
activity.  Madame  Amberg's  revolutionary  li- 
brary, valuable  as  it  was  in  distracting  their 
thoughts  from  the  silence  and  beauty  around  them 
and  defending  them  against  the  unknown,  could 
not  entirely  supply  the  place  of  daily  whirl  and 
unceasing  snarl  and  argument;  William  pined  un- 
consciously for  the  din  and  dust  of  the  platform 
and  Griselda  missed  the  weekly  temper  into  which 
she  worked  herself  in  sympathy  with  her  weekly 
Suffragette.  She  missed  it  so  much  that  at  last 
she  was  moved  to  utterance  —  late  on  a  still, 


52      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

heavy  evening  in  August,  when  once  or  twice  there 
had  come  up  the  valley  a  distant  mutter  as  of 
thunder. 

"  Dear,"  she  said  gently,  as  they  sat  by  the 
window  after  supper,  "  I  don't  know  how  you  feel 
about  it,  but  I  am  beginning  to  think  that  our  life 
here  is  almost  too  peaceful.  It  is  beautiful  to  sit 
here  together  and  dream  and  forget  the  world  — 
but  is  it  a  preparation  for  the  life  we  are  to  lead? 
Is  it  a  preparation  for  our  work?  " 

William  sighed  a  gentle  sigh  of  relief,  and  his 
hand  went  out  to  his  wife's  in  a  squeeze  of  agree- 
ment and  gratitude.  As  usual,  their  minds  had 
jumped  together  and  the  thought  of  twain  had 
been  uttered  by  the  lips  of  one. 

"  I've  been  thinking  the  same  thing  myself,"  he 
said.  "  It  has  struck  me  more  than  once.  As 
you  say,  it's  beautiful  here  in  the  heart  of  the 
country  —  nothing  could  be  more  beautiful.  But 
I  have  wondered,  especially  lately,  if  it  isn't  en- 
ervating. It  is  good  for  some  people,  perhaps; 
but  when  you  have  an  aim  in  life  and  the  fighting 

spirit  in  you " 

1  Yes,"  Griselda  flared  responsively,  "  it's  the 
fighting  spirit  —  and  the  Cause  calling  to  us. 
I've  been  hearing  the  call  getting  louder  and 
louder;  we  can't  stand  aside  any  longer,  we 
haven't  the  right  to  stand  aside.  How  can  I  — 
how  dare  I  —  rest  and  enjoy  myself  when  there 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      53 

are  noble  women  struggling  for  freedom,  suffer- 
ing for  freedom,  keeping  the  flag  flying ?" 

And  the  unconscious  little  humbug  clasped  her 
hands  and,  from  force  of  habit,  rose  to  her  feet, 
addressing  an  imaginary  audience.  William,  an 
equally  unconscious  humbug,  also  rose  to  his  feet 
and  kissed  her.  It  was  one  of  those  happy  and 
right-minded  .moments  in  which  inclination  agrees 
with  duty,  and  they  were  able  to  admire  them- 
selves and  each  other  for  a  sacrifice  which  had 
cost  them  nothing. 

The  decision  taken,  there  remained  only  the 
details  of  their  speedy  departure  to  settle.  Their 
first  impatient  impulse  was  to  leave  for  Brussels 
on  the  morrow,  but  on  consideration  they  decided 
that  the  morrow  would  be  too  soon.  Investiga- 
tion of  a  local  time-table  revealed  the  fact  that 
the  connection  with  Brussels  —  the  only  tolerable 
connection  —  meant  a  start  in  the  very  early 
morning;  but  an  early  start  meant  an  overnight 
warning  to  the  farm-boy,  Philippe,  that  his  serv- 
ices would  be  needful  to  carry  their  bags  to  the 
station  —  and  the  farm-people,  all  of  them,  went 
to  bed  soon  after  the  sun  and  were  certainly  by 
now  asleep.  There  was,  further,  the  old  lady 
to  settle  with  where  financial  matters  were  con- 
cerned, and  it  always  took  time  to  make  out  her 
illegible  bill.  On  reflection,  therefore,  they  de- 
cided for  the  following  day. 


54      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

"  I  hope,"  Griselda  meditated,  "  that  I  shall 
be  able  to  make  Madame  Peys  understand  that 
we  want  the  boy  the  first  thing  in  the  morning.  I 
expect  she  will  see  what  I  mean  if  I  show  her 
the  train  in  the  time-table  and  say  '  Philippe/  and 
point  to  the  bags.  That  ought  to  make  it  clear. 
It  rather  detracts  from  the  enjoyment  of  being 
abroad  —  not  being  able  to  make  people  under- 
stand what  you  say.  Interlaken  was  much  more 
convenient  in  that  way ;  all  the  waiters  spoke  Eng- 
lish quite  nicely.  And  the  understanding  is  even 
more  difficult  than  the  speaking.  To-night  Ma- 
dame was  talking  away  hard  to  me  all  the  time 
she  was  cooking  our  supper,  but  I  couldn't  make 
out  one  word  she  said  —  only  that  she  was  very 
excited.  I  said,  '  Oui,  oui,'  every  now  and  then, 
because  she  seemed  to  expect  it,  and  I  was  sorry 
to  see  her  upset.  I  thought  perhaps  one  of  the 
people  at  the  farm  was  ill,  but  I've  seen  her  son 
and  his  wife  and  the  boy  since,  so  it  can't  be  that. 
Of  course,  she  may  have  other  relations  in  some 
other  part  of  the  country  —  or  perhaps  some- 
thing has  happened  to  one  of  the  cows.  I  could 
see  she  was  worried." 

They  sat  until  late  side  by  side  by  the  open 
window  and  talked  in  snatches  of  the  world  they 
were  going  back  to  —  the  dear,  familiar,  self- 
important  world  of  the  agitated  and  advanced. 
Its  dust  was  already  in  their  nostrils,  its  clamor 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      55 

already  in  their  ears;  in  three  days  more  they 
would  be  in  it  once  again  with  their  own  little 
turbulent  folk.  The  mere  thought  increased 
their  sense  of  their  own  value,  and  they  grew  gay 
and  excited  as  they  talked  and  planned,  instinc- 
tively turning  their  backs  on  the  window  and 
shutting  out  sight  and  sound  of  the  country  peace, 
the  oppressive  peace  in  which  they  had  no  part. 

"What  shall  we  do  to-morrow,  darling?" 
Griselda  asked  at  length.  The  question  was 
prompted  by  her  longing  for  to-morrow  to  be  over 
and  her  mind  was  in  search  of  some  method  for 
inducing  it  to  pass  with  swiftness. 

They  considered  the  point  with  that  object  in 
view,  and  decided  that  should  the  day  prove  fine 
they  would  spend  it  away  from  the  cottage,  taking 
their  lunch  with  them.  There  was  a  winding 
path  leading  up  through  the  woods  to  the  heights 
which  they  had  not  yet  explored  except  for  a  short 
distance ;  they  would  start  out,  provisioned,  soon 
after  breakfast,  to  go  where  the  path  led  them, 
and  eat  their  meal  on  the  hill-top.  Then  home  to 
supper,  settlement  with  Madame,  and  an  early 
departure  next  morning.  ...  So  they  planned 
comfortably  and  without  misgiving,  while  the 
world  seethed  in  the  melting-pot  and  the  Kaiser 
battered  at  Liege. 

"  If  it's  fine,"  William  cautioned  again  as  they 
mounted  the  stairs  to  bed.  "  I've  heard  thunder 


56      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

several  times  in  the  distance,  so  we  may  have  a 
storm  in  the  morning." 

There  was  no  storm,  or  sign  of  a  storm  in  the 
morning.  It  must  have  passed  over,  Griselda 
said;  she  had  listened  to  its  faint  and  distant  mut- 
terings  for  half-an-hour  before  she  fell  asleep. 
Their  meal  of  coffee  and  new-laid  eggs  was  wait- 
ing on  the  stove  as  usual,  and  Madame  Peys  had 
vanished  as  usual  before  they  came  down  to  par- 
take of  it.  They  hard-boiled  more  eggs  while 
they  breakfasted,  and,  the  meal  disposed  of,  set  to 
work  to  cut  plentiful  sandwiches  and  otherwise 
furnish  their  basket.  As  their  road  up  the  hill 
did  not  lead  them  past  the  farm,  and  Madame 
Peys  had  not  yet  put  in  an  appearance  for  the 
process  of  tidying  up,  William  inscribed  in  large 
round-hand  on  an  envelope  the  word  "  Sorti,"  as 
a  sign  to  their  housekeeper  that  the  preparation 
of  a  midday  meal  was  unnecessary;  and  having 
placed  the  announcement  on  the  kitchen  table, 
duly  weighted  with  a  saucer,  he  took  the  basket 
on  one  arm,  his  wife  on  the  other,  and  set  out. 

They  met  not  a  soul  that  morning  as  they 
mounted  the  winding  little  path  —  somewhat 
slowly,  for  the  winding  little  path  was  not  only 
longer  than  they  had  expected  but  very  steep  in 
places.  Further,  the  day  was  hot  even  under  the 
trees,  and  they  rested  more  than  once  before  they 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      57 

reached  their  goal,  the  heights  that  crowned  the 
valley;  rested  with  their  backs  against  a  beech- 
trunk,  and  talked  of  themselves  and  what  inter- 
ested them  —  of  meetings  past  and  to  come,  of 
the  treachery  of  the  Labor  Party,  of  the  wicked- 
ness of  the  Government  and  the  necessity  for  ter- 
rifying its  members  by  new  and  astounding  tactics. 
The  idea  had  been  to  lunch  when  the  heights  above 
them  were  gained;  but  the  weight  of  the  basket 
made  itself  felt  in  the  heat,  and  they  were  still 
some  distance  from  their  goal  when  they  decided 
it  was  time  to  lighten  it.  They  did  so  in  the  cus- 
tomary fashion,  ate  well  and  heartily,  and  al- 
though they  allowed  an  unhurried  interval  for 
digestion  were  even  less  enthusiastic  about  their 
uphill  walk  than  they  had  been  before  partaking 
of  lunch.  It  was  a  relief  to  them  when  at  last 
they  emerged  from  the  trees  and  found  them- 
selves high  above  the  valley  and  entering  on  a 
wide  stretch  of  upland;  the  wide  stretch  of  up- 
land had  no  particular  attraction,  but  it  denoted 
the  limits  of  their  excursion  and  a  consequent  re- 
turn downhill. 

"  Don't  you  think  we've  about  been  far 
enough?"  Griselda  suggested.  "There's  rather 
a  glare  now  we're  out  of  the  wood,  and  it's  not 
particularly  pretty  here." 

William  agreed  whole-heartedly  —  adding, 
however,  as  a  rider,  that  a  rest  was  desirable  be- 


58      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

fore  they  started  homeward,  and  that  if  they  went 
as  far  as  the  rise  in  the  ground  a  hundred  yards 
to  their  right  they  would  probably  have  quite  a 
good  view,  and  he  expected  there  would  be  a  nice 
breeze.  In  accordance  with  these  expectations 
they  mounted  the  knoll,  found  the  breeze  and  the 
view  they  expected,  and  subsided  in  the  shade  of 
a  bush. 

If  they  had  but  known  it,  they  were  the  last 
tourists  of  their  race  who  for  many  and  many  a 
day  to  come  were  to  look  on  the  scene  before 
them.  Had  they  but  known  it,  they  would  cer- 
tainly have  scanned  it  more  keenly;  as  it  was,  they 
surveyed  the  wide  landscape  contentedly,  but  with 
no  particular  enthusiasm.  On  every  side  of  them 
were  the  rounded  uplands  —  a  table-land  gently 
swelling  and  cleft  here  and  there  by  wooded  val- 
leys. On  their  right  was  the  deep  cleft  from 
which  they  had  mounted  through  the  woods;  and 
before  them  the  ground  dropped  sharply  to  the 
edge  of  a  cliff,  the  boundary  of  a  wider  cleft  run- 
ning at  right  angles  to  their  own  green  valley  of 
silence.  It  was  along  this  wider  cleft  that  the 
railway  ran,  the  little  branch  line  that  to-morrow 
(so  they  thought)  was  to  take  them  on  the  first 
stage  of  their  journey.  From  their  perch  on  the 
hill-top  they  could  see  the  three  ribbons  of  dark 
track,  white  road  and  shadowed  river  which  be- 
tween them  filled  the  valley.  The  wall  of  rock 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      59 

jutted  forward  on  their  left,  hiding,  as  they  knew, 
the  wayside  railway  station  at  which  they  had  ar- 
rived and  the  cluster  of  neat  houses  beside  it;  to 
the  right  again  there  was  a  bend  no  less  sharp  — 
and  between  the  two  a  stretch  of  empty  road. 

"  It's  very  pretty,"  said  Griselda,  yawning  and 
fanning  herself,  "  but  I  wish  it  wasn't  quite  so 
hot.  I  suppose  there's  nothing  left  to  drink?" 

William  was  sorry  there  wrsn't  —  they  had 
finished  the  last  drop  at  lunch.  Griselda  sighed, 
stretched  herself  out  on  her  elbow,  with  her  face 
towards  the  eastern  bluff,  and  saw  coming  round 
it  a  group  of  three  or  four  horsemen  —  little  toy- 
like  horses,  carrying  little  toy  men  past  trees  that 
looked  like  bushes.  They  were  moving  quickly; 
the  toy-like  horses  were  cantering  on  the  white 
ribbon  of  road.  Griselda  pointed  them  out  to 
William,  and  the  pair  leaned  forward  to  watch 
them  pass,  hundreds  of  feet  below. 

'They're  scampering  along,"  she  said;  "they 
must  be  in  a  hurry.  What  funny  little  things 
they  look  from  here  —  like  insects !  They'll  be 
out  of  sight  in  a  minute  —  no,  they've  stopped. 
...  I  believe  they're  turning  back." 

The  funny  little  things  had  halted  simultane- 
ously at  the  foot  of  the  jutting  cliff  which  hid 
the  village  and  the  station  from  the  eyes  of  Wil- 
liam and  Griselda.  As  Griselda  had  said,  in  an- 
other moment  they  would  have  been  round  it  and 


60      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

out  of  sight,  and  fifty  more  yarus  or  so  beyond 
the  bend  would  have  brought  them  to  the  outskirts 
of  the  village.  Instead,  they  halted  and  drew 
together  for  an  instant;  then  one  funny  little 
thing,  detaching  himself  from  the  group,  scam- 
pered backwards  by  the  road  he  had  come,  and 
continued  scampering  till  he  rounded  the  eastward 
bluff.  His  insects  of  companions  remained 
grouped  where  he  had  left  them,  their  horses 
shifting  backwards  and  forwards  on  the  white  sur- 
face of  the  road. 

"  They're  waiting  for  him  to  come  back,"  Gri- 
selda  concluded  idly.  "  I  expect  they've  forgot- 
ten something." 

What  they  had  forgotten  proved  to  be  a  column 
of  horsemen  curving  in  swift  and  orderly  fashion 
round  the  foot  of  the  eastward  bluff.  It  came 
on,  a  supple  and  decorative  line,  bending  with  the 
bend  and  straightening  as  the  valley  straightened. 

"  Soldiers,"  said  William,  with  the  orthodox 
accent  of  contempt  —  following  with  a  pleasure 
he  would  not  for  worlds  have  admitted  the  sin- 
uous windings  of  the  troop.  There  is  in  the  or- 
derly movement  of  men  an  attraction  which  few 
can  resist;  it  appealed  even  to  his  elementary 
sense  of  the  rhythmic,  and  he,  like  Griselda,  bent 
forward  to  watch  and  to  listen  to  the  distant  clat- 
ter of  hoofs  echoed  back  from  the  walls  of  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      61 

valley.  As  the  horsemen  swung  out  of  sight 
round  the  westward  bluff  and  the  clatter  of  hoof- 
beats  deadened,  he  held  up  a  finger,  and  Griselda 
asked,  "What  is  it?" 

"  Guns,"  he  said.  "  Cannon  —  don't  you  hear 
them?" 

She  did;  a  soft,  not  unpleasing  thud,  repeated 
again  and  again,  and  coming  down  the  breeze 
from  the  northward. 

"  It  must  be  maneuvers,"  he  explained. 
"  That's  what  those  soldiers  are  doing.  I  ex- 
pect it's  what  they  call  the  autumn  maneuvers." 

"  Playing  at  murder,"  Griselda  commented, 
producing  the  orthodox  sigh.  She  had  heard  the 
phrase  used  by  a  pacifist  orator  in  the  Park  and 
considered  it  apt  and  telling.  "  What  a  waste  of 
time  —  and  what  a  brutalizing  influence  on  the 
soldiers  themselves !  Ah,  if  only  women  had  a 
say  in  national  affairs!  "...  and  she  made  the 
customary  glib  oration  on  her  loved  and  familiar 
text.  Before  it  was  quite  finished,  William  held 
up  his  finger  again  —  needlessly,  for  Griselda  had 
stopped  short  on  her  own  initiative.  This  time 
it  was  a  crackle  of  sharp  little  shots,  not  far  away 
and  softened  like  the  sound  of  the  heavier  guns, 
but  comparatively  close  at  hand  and,  if  their  ears 
did  not  deceive  them,  just  beyond  the  westward 
bluff. 


62      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

14  They're  pretending  to  fight  in  the  village," 
Griselda  said.  "  How  silly !  Firing  off  guns  and 
making  believe  to  shoot  people." 

"  Militarism,"  William  assented,  "  is  always 
silly."  And  he,  in  his  turn,  enlarged  on  his  fa- 
vorite text,  the  impossibility  of  international  war- 
fare, owing  to  the  ever-growing  solidarity  of  the 
European  working-classes  —  his  little  homily  be- 
ing punctuated  here  and  there  by  a  further  crackle 
from  below.  When  he  had  enlarged  sufficiently 
and  Griselda  had  duly  agreed,  he  returned  as  it 
were  to  private  life  and  suggested: 

"  If  you're  feeling  more  rested,  shall  we  make 
a  start?  It's  cooler  under  the  trees." 

They  started,  accordingly,  on  their  homeward 
way,  which  was  even  longer  than  the  route  they 
had  taken  in  the  morning:  one  little  wood  path 
was  very  like  another  and  they  managed  to  take 
a  wrong  turning,  bear  too  much  to  the  right  and 
make  a  considerable  detour.  When  the  cottage 
came  in  sight  they  were  both  thirsty,  and  secretly 
relieved  that  their  last  excursion  was  over. 

"  We'll  put  on  the  spirit-lamp  and  have  some 
tea,"  Griselda  announced  as  they  pushed  open 
the  door.  "Oh,  dear!  it's  lovely  to  think  we 
shall  be  in  London  so  soon.  How  I  would  love  a 
strawberry  ice!  Where's  the  match-box?" 

It  was  not  until  the  match-box  was  found  and 
the  spirit-lamp  kindled  that  William  discovered 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      63 

on  the  kitchen  table  a  mystery  in  the  shape  of  a 
document.  It  was  an  unimposing  looking  docu- 
ment, not  over  clean,  indicated  in  pencil  on  the 
reverse  of  the  half-sheet  of  paper  on  which  Wil- 
liam that  morning  had  written  his  announcement 
of  "  Sorti."  Like  William's  announcement,  the 
communication  was  in  French,  of  a  kind  —  pre- 
sumably uneducated  French  if  one  judged  by  the 
writing;  and  like  William  the  author  of  the  com- 
munication (in  all  likelihood  Madame  Peys)  had 
placed  it  in  the  center  of  the  table  and  crowned 
it  with  a  saucer  before  leaving. 

"  I  suppose  it  must  be  for  us,"  William  re- 
marked doubtfully.  "  I  can't  make  out  a  word  of 
it  —  can  you?  " 

"  Of  course  not,"  Griselda  returned  with  a 
spice  of  irritation  —  she  was  tired  and  her  boots 
hurt  her.  "  I  couldn't  read  that  ridiculous  writ- 
ing if  it  was  English.  It's  that  silly  old  woman, 
Madame  Peys,  I  suppose ;  but  what  is  the  good  of 
her  writing  us  letters  when  she  knows  we  can't 
read  them?  " 

"  Perhaps,"  William  suggested,  "  it's  to  say 
she  won't  be  able  to  cook  our  supper  to-night?" 

"  Very  likely,"  his  wife  agreed,  the  spice  of 
irritation  still  more  pronounced.  "  If  that's  it, 
we  shall  have  to  do  with  eggs  —  we  used  up  the 
cold  meat  for  sandwiches  at  lunch,  and  there's 
nothing  else  in  the  house.  We'd  better  go  round 


64      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

to  the  farm  when  we've  had  our  tea  and  find  out 
what  she  wants  —  stupid  old  thing !  Whether 
she  comes  here  or  not,  we  must  see  her  to  get  the 
bill  and  order  the  boy  for  the  morning.  But  I 
don't  mean  to  move  another  step  till  I've  had  my 
tea." 


CHAPTER  V 

THEY  had  their  tea,  Griseida  with  her 
boots  off  and  her  aching  feet  resting  on 
a  chair;  and  after  she  had  lapped  up 
two  comfortable  cups  her  irritation  subsided  and 
she  was  once  again  her  pleasant  and  chattering 
little  self.  William,  to  give  her  a  further  rest, 
volunteered,  though  with  some  hesitation,  to  make 
the  visit  to  the  farm  alone ;  in  his  mind,  as  in  her 
own,  Griseida  was  the  French  scholar  of  the  pair, 
a  reputation  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  she  to 
whom  Madame  Peys  preferred,  as  a  rule,  to  ad- 
dress her  unintelligible  remarks.  Griseida  knew 
what  the  offer  cost  him  and  generously  declined  to 
take  advantage  of  it  —  stipulating  only  for  a  few 
minutes  more  repose  before  incasing  her  weary 
feet  again  in  boots.  The  few  minutes  drew  out 
into  half-an-hour  or  more,  and  the  shadows  were 
lengthening  in  the  valley  when  they  started  on 
their  walk  to  the  farm.  They  started  arm-in- 
arm,  the  wife  leaning  on  the  husband;  but  when 
they  came  in  sight  of  the  house  Griseida  took  her 
arm  from  William's  and  they  drew  a  little  apart. 

65 


66      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

They  need  not  have  troubled  to  observe  the 
minor  proprieties;  not  a  soul  stirred,  not  a  nose 
showed  itself  as  they  opened  the  little  wooden 
gate  of  the  garden  and  made  for  the  open  door. 
They  were  both  of  them  unobservant  of  country 
sights  and  sounds,  and  it  was  not  until  they  had 
knocked  in  vain  on  the  open  door  and  called  in 
vain  on  the  name  of  Madame  Peys  that  they 
were  struck  by  the  absence  of  the  usual  noises  of 
the  farm.  There  was  neither  lowing  of  cows  nor 
crowing  and  clucking  of  poultry;  and  the  nonde- 
script of  a  dog  who  usually  heralded  the  approach 
of  a  visitor  by  strangling  tugs  at  his  chain  and 
vociferous  canine  curses,  for  once  had  allowed 
their  advent  to  pass  unchallenged.  They  realized 
suddenly  that  there  was  a  strange  silence  from 
the  kennel  and  turned  simultaneously  to  look 
at  it. 

"  It's  odd,"  said  William.  "  I  suppose  they've 
all  gone  out,  and  taken  the  dog  with  them." 

"Where  are  the  cocks  and  hens?"  said  Gri- 
selda  suddenly.  As  if  in  answer  to  her  query,  a 
scraggy  pullet  at  the  awkward  age  appeared  on 
the  top  of  the  farmyard  gate,  flapped  ground- 
wards  and  proceeded  to  investigate  the  neighbor- 
ing soil  with  a  series  of  businesslike  pecks.  Their 
eyes  turned  towards  the  yard  whence  the  pullet 
had  emerged  in  search  of  her  usual  bevy  of 
feathered  companions;  but  the  satisfied  cluck  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      67 

the  bird  as  she  sampled  a  seed  remained  unechoed 
and  unanswered  and  brought  no  comrade  to  the 
spot.  Obviously  the  family  excursion  was  un- 
likely to  be  accompanied  by  a  lengthy  procession 
of  poultry;  and  moved  by  a  common  impulse  of 
wonder  William  and  Griselda  made  for  the  gate 
and  surveyed  the  farmyard  beyond.  .  .  .  The 
doors  of  byre  and  stable  were  standing  wide,  un- 
tenanted  either  by  horse  or  by  cow,  and  the  two 
farm-carts  had  vanished.  There  was  a  small 
dark  square  in  the  corner  of  the  yard  marking  the 
spot  where  yesterday  an  imprisoned  mother  had 
kept  watch  and  ward  over  a  baker's  dozen  of  at- 
tractive yellow  downlings;  now  the  dark  square 
was  the  only  trace  of  mother,  chicks  and  cell. 

"  I  wish,"  said  William,  "  that  we  could  read 
what's  written  on  that  paper.  What  can  have 
happened  to  them  all?  " 

"  What's  happened  to  them  is  that  they've 
gone,"  Griselda  returned  with  decision.  "  And 
gone  for  a  good  long  time  —  people  don't  take 
their  cows  and  chickens  and  cart-horses  with  them 
when  they  go  for  a  week-end.  I  suppose  they're 
moving  and  taking  another  farm." 

"  Ye-es?  "  William  agreed  doubtfully.  "  But 
I  shouldn't  have  thought  they'd  have  moved  at 
such  short  notice  —  with  all  those  animals.  Of 
course,  if  they're  moving,  they'll  come  back  for 
what  they've  left  —  those  spades  and  the  wheel- 


68      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

barrow  and  the  furniture.  There  are  a  lot  of 
things  still  in  the  kitchen  .  .  .  they  may  come  to 
fetch  them  to-night." 

"  They're  sure  to,"  his  wife  said  hopefully. 
"  Besides,  Madame  Peys  would  never  leave  us 
without  milk  or  provisions  for  the  morning  — 
she's  much  too  considerate.  I  daresay  the  new 
farm  isn't  far  off,  and  she'll  either  come  herself 
or  send  Philippe.  Then  we  must  explain  about 
the  train  to-morrow  morning." 

William,  still  doubtful  in  spite  of  Griselda's 
optimism,  paused  at  the  half-open  door  of  the 
kitchen,  pushed  it  more  widely  ajar  and  surveyed 
the  interior  in  detail. 

"  They  must  have  started  in  rather  a  hurry," 
he  commented. 

The  comment  was  justified  by  the  disordered 
appearance  of  the  room,  suggesting  a  departure 
anything  but  leisurely  and  packing  anything  but 
methodical.  There  was  an  arm-chair  upturned  by 
the  hearth  where  the  ashes  of  the  wood  fire  still 
glowed  and  reddened  in  places,  but  all  the  other 
chairs  had  vanished.  The  heavy  table  was  still 
in  the  center  of  the  room,  but  a  smaller  one  had 
gone,  and  several  pans  were  missing  from  the  row 
that  shimmered  on  the  wall  opposite  the  fire- 
place. The  canary's  cage  and  the  clock  on  the 
mantelpiece  had  departed;  and  the  china  cupboard 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      69 

standing  wide  open  was  rifled  of  part  of  its  con- 
tents —  apparently  a  random  selection.  On  the 
floor  in  one  corner  was  a  large  checkered  table- 
cloth knotted  into  a  bundle  and  containing,  judg- 
ing by  its  bulges,  a  collection  of  domestic  objects 
of  every  shape  known  to  the  housewife.  It  lay 
discarded  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  like  a  bursting 
and  badly  cooked  pudding;  its  formidable  size 
and  unwieldy  contour  accounting  in  themselves 
for  the  household's  decision  to  abandon  it.  ... 
There  was  about  the  place  —  as  in  all  dismantled 
or  partially  dismantled  rooms  —  an  indefinite  sug- 
gestion of  melancholy;  William  and  Griselda 
were  conscious  of  its  influence  as  they  stood  in  the 
center  of  the  kitchen  which  they  had  hitherto 
known  only  as  a  model  of  orderly  arrangement. 

"  I  wonder  how  long  they  will  be,"  Griselda 
said,  as  she  and  her  husband  came  out  into  the 
dying  sunlight.  "  It  isn't  any  good  hanging 
about  here;  if  nobody  has  turned  up  we  can  stroll 
down  again  after  supper.  ...  I  wonder  if  I 
could  make  an  omelette  —  I've  often  watched  her 
do  it,  and  it  doesn't  seem  so  very  difficult.  How 
lonely  that  chicken  looks  poking  about  by  itself." 

Her  eye  followed  the  gawky  pullet  as  it  clucked 
and  pecked  in  its  loneliness  about  the  vegetable 
garden  —  and  suddenly  her  hand  shot  out  and 
caught  at  her  husband's  arm. 


70      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

"  William,"  she  said  in  a  queer  little  whisper, 
"what's  that?" 

"What?"  William  queried,  half-startled  by 
the  clutch  and  the  whisper. 

"Don't  you  see?  —  that  heap  .  .  .  beyond 
the  gooseberry  bushes !  " 

He  looked  where  she  pointed,  and  she  felt  him 
thrill,  as  she  herself  had  thrilled  when  her  hand 
wenUout  to  his  arm;  neither  spoke  as  they  went 
towards  the  end  of  the  garden,  instinctively  hush- 
ing their  footsteps.  .  .  .  The  soft  earth  beyond 
the  gooseberry  bushes  had  been  heaped  into 
a  long  mound,  and  the  solitary  pullet  was 
clucking  and  pecking  at  the  side  of  a  new-made 
grave. 

They  stood  looking  down  at  it  in  silence  — 
dumb  and  uneasily  fearful  in  the  presence  of  a 
mystery  beyond  their  powers  of  fathoming.  The 
empty,  untidy  house  behind  them  was  suddenly  a 
threat  and  a  shadow;  so  was  the  loneliness  and 
all-inclosing  silence  of  the  valley.  .  .  .  The 
damp  garden  earth  was  still  fresh  and  black  from 
its  turning;  whoever  lay  under  it  could  have  lain 
but  an  hour  or  two;  and,  lest  the  unmistakable 
shape  of  the  mound  should  fail  to  indicate  what 
it  covered,  some  one  had  laid  on  it  a  red  spray 
torn  from  a  rose-bush  and  with  a  stick  and  a  knot 
of  string  had  fashioned  a  cross  for  the  head. 
Two  crossed  hazel  shoots  and  a  handful  of  roses 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      71 

betokened  that  a  spirit  had  returned  to  the  God 
Who  gave  it. 

As  they  stood  at  the  graveside  in  the  peace  of 
the  evening,  the  constant  mutter  of  distant  guns 
sent  a  low-spoken  threat  along  the  valley;  but 
they  were  too  much  engrossed  in  their  thoughts 
and  surroundings  to  give  it  ear  or  heed,  and  it 
was  the  pullet  who  roused  them  from  their  stupor 
of  dumb  astonishment.  Encouraged  by  their 
stillness,  she  drew  near,  surveyed  the  mound  and 
with  a  flap  of  her  clipped  wings  alighted  under 
the  cross.  William  instinctively  bent  forward  to 
"  shoo  "  her  away,  and  as  she  fled  protesting  to 
a  safer  neighborhood  the  husband  and  wife  for 
the  first  time  moved  and  spoke. 

"What  can  have  happened?"  Griselda  whis- 
pered. a  Do  you  think William,  you 

don't  think  there  has  been  a  murder?  " 

William  shook  his  head,  though  not  with  excess 
of  confidence.  "  There's  the  cross,"  he  objected, 
"  and  the  roses.  A  murderer  would  hardly  put 
roses " 

"  I  don't  know,"  Griselda  whispered  back. 
"  You  hear  of  criminals  doing  such  strange  things 
—  and  perhaps  it  was  done  hastily,  in  a  quarrel, 
and  the  murderer  repented  at  once.  .  .  .  For  all 
we  know,  that  paper  on  our  kitchen  table  may  be 
a  confession.  ...  I  wonder  whose  grave  it  is  — 
if  it's  one  of  the  Pcys.  It's  so  odd  their  all  bar- 


72      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ing  gone  —  there  must  be  something  wrong.  .  .  . 
You  don't  suppose  they've  gone  off  to  hide  them- 
selves? " 

William  reminded  her  of  the  absence  of  the 
farmyard  stock  —  and  she  admitted  that  a  family 
seeking  to  elude  justice  would  hardly  be  so  foolish 
as  to  attempt  to  conceal  itself  from  the  police  in 
the  company  of  seven  cows,  two  cart-horses  and 
an  entire  colony  of  poultry.  Nor,  when  untrod- 
den woods  lay  around  them,  would  they  call  at- 
tention to  the  crime  by  placing  the  grave  of  their 
victim  in  a  prominent  position  in  the  garden; 
while  it  was  difficult  to  think  of  the  Peys  family, 
as  they  had  known  them,  as  murderers  and  accom- 
plices of  murderers:  the  old  lady  so  cheery  and 
shrewd,  her  son  and  his  wife  so  unintelligibly 
friendly,  and  Philippe  so  loutishly  good-natured. 

For  a  while  a  gruesome  fascination  held  them 
to  the  side  of  the  grave  —  and  then  Griselda 
quivered  and  said  suddenly,  "  Let's  go  home." 
They  walked  away  softly  and  closed  the  gate 
softly  behind  them;  and,  once  they  were  well  be- 
yond it,  instinctively  quickened  their  footsteps. 
They  walked  arm-in-arm,  speaking  little,  on  their 
way  back  to  the  cottage,  and  it  was  not  until  they 
were  almost  on  the  threshold  of  their  solitary 
homestead  that  it  struck  them  that  perhaps  they 
would  only  be  fulfilling  their  legal  duty  by  in- 
forming the  local  authorities  of  the  presence  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      73 

the  new-made  grave.  They  discussed  the  idea, 
considered  it,  and  after  discussion  rejected  it:  for 
one  thing,  there  was  the  language  difficulty,  for 
another  the  natural  shrinking  of  the  foreigner 
from  entangling  himself  in  unknown  processes  of 
law  —  involving  possible  detention  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  evidence.  They  decided  that  it 
would  be  better  for  the  present  to  await  events, 
and  hope  for  the  return  of  some  member  of  the 
vanished  family. 

In  after  days,  when  after  events  had  given  him 
a  clew,  William  framed  his  solution  to  the  mystery 
of  the  grave  and  the  empty  farmhouse  —  a  solu- 
tion which  perhaps  was  not  correct  as  to  detail  but 
was  certainly  right  in  substance.  Some  fleeing 
Belgian,  wounded  to  death,  had  found  strength 
to  outrun  or  outride  the  Uhlan,  and  seeking  a 
refuge  in  the  hidden  valley  had  brought  his  news 
to  the  farmhouse,  and  died  after  giving  it  utter- 
ance. Those  who  heard  it  had  buried  him  in 
haste,  and  straightway  fled  from  the  invader  — 
fled  clumsily,  with  horse  and  cart  and  cattle,  leav- 
ing their  scribbled,  unreadable  warning  to  the  ab- 
sent tenants  of  the  cottage.  Whether  they  fled 
far  and  successfully,  or  whether  they  were  over- 
taken and  in  due  course  held  fast  behind  the  bar- 
rier of  flesh  and  iron  that  shut  off  the  German 
and  his  conquests  from  the  rest  of  the  civilized 
world  —  that  William  and  Griselda  never  knew. 


74      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

In  the  meantime,  unfurnished  with  any  clew,  un- 
knowing of  the  wild  fury  that  in  its  scathing  of 
the  civilized  world  was  shattering  their  most 
cherished  illusions,  they  sought  in  vain  for  an  ex- 
planation, and  —  without  putting  the  fact  into 
words  —  lit  the  lamp  earlier  than  usual  and  took 
care  to  bolt  the  door.  Usually  it  was  fastened 
only  on  the  latch,  so  that  Madame  could  let  her- 
self in  with  the  early  morning;  but  to-night  the 
darkness  was  unfriendly  and  the  lonely  valley  held 
they  knew  not  what  of  threatening. 

Griselda,  uneasily  pondering  on  other  matters, 
had  no  mind  to  give  to  the  experiment  of  an 
omelette,  and  their  supper  was  plain  boiled  eggs 
—  boiled  hard  while  she  sat  with  wrinkled  brow, 
unheeding  of  the  flight  of  minutes.  While  they 
supped,  their  ears  were  always  on  the  alert  for  a 
footstep  or  a  hail  from  without;  and  perhaps  for 
that  reason  they  noticed  as  they  had  never  noticed 
before  the  faint  ghostly  noises  of  the  country  — 
the  night-calling  bird  and  the  shiver  of  leaves 
when  the  air  stirred  and  sighed.  They  talked 
with  effort  and  frequent  pause,  and  with  now  and 
again  a  glance  thrown  sideways  at  the  open  win- 
dow and  the  forest  blackness  behind  it;  there 
were  no  blinds  to  the  windows,  and  but  for  the 
•till,  heavy  heat  they  would  have  fastened  the 
shutters  and  barred  out  the  forest  blackness. 
Perhaps  they  would  have  borne  with  the  heat  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      75 

a  closed  room  had  not  both  been  ashamed  to  con- 
fess their  fear  of  the  window.  In  both  their 
minds  was  the  sense  of  being  very  far  removed 
from  humanity,  the  knowledge  that  between  them 
and  humanity  was  a  lonely  path  and  a  house  with 
its  doors  set  open  —  a  house  deserted  and  half 
dismantled  with  a  nameless  grave  before  it.  Un- 
imaginative as  they  both  were,  they  pictured  the 
grave  in  the  darkness  with  its  roughly  tied  cross 
and  its  handful  of  wilting  rosebuds. 

They  went  upstairs  earlier  than  usual,  chiefly 
because  they  felt  more  comfortable  when  the 
windows  below  were  fastened.  William,  coming 
last  with  the  candle,  took  the  added  precaution  of 
turning  the  key  in  the  door  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs;  and  Griselda,  though  she  made  no  remark, 
heard  the  click  of  the  lock  with  a  secret  throb  of 
relief.  Upstairs  they  began  by  a  little  pretense 
of  undressing  —  and  then  Griselda,  with  her  hair 
down  her  back,  sat  close  to  William,  with  his  coat 
off,  and  they  held  hands  and  talked  in  undertones 
in  the  intervals  of  listening  for  a  footstep.  The 
footstep  never  came ;  but  it  was  not  until  close 
upon  midnight  that  —  knowing  the  early  habits 
of  the  former  tenants  of  the  farm  —  they  gave 
up  all  hope  of  hearing  it  and  began  to  discuss  their 
plans  for  the  following  day,  on  the  presumption 
that  they  must  leave  the  cottage  and  remove  their 
alone.  Such  unaided  removal  meant  an 


76      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

earlier  uprising  than  they  had  counted  on  —  since 
if  Madame  did  not  prepare  their  breakfast  they 
need  must  prepare  it  themselves;  and  this  mis- 
fortune realized,  they  decided  to  sit  up  no  longer. 
They  went  to  bed,  but  left  the  candle  burning  — 
as  they  said  to  each  other,  lest  one  of  the  Peys 
family  should  knock  them  up  during  the  night. 
Neither  slept  much,  partly  from  nervous  uneasi- 
ness and  partly  from  fear  of  oversleeping;  but  if 
they  had  guessed  what  a  day  would  bring  forth, 
neither  would  have  slept  at  all. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THEY  had  left  their  bedroom  windows 
uncurtained,  that  the  morning  light 
might  waken  them,  and  they  were  hardly 
later  than  the  August  sun  in  opening  their  eyes 
on  the  world.  Though  they  had  slept  but  little, 
and  by  snatches,  they  turned  out  of  bed  without 
regret;  the  flood  of  sunlight  brought  warmth  into 
their  hearts  and  the  shadowy  horror  of  the  night 
before  was  lifted  with  the  mists  of  the  valley;  but 
all  the  same  the  place,  once  only  faintly  myste- 
rious, was  now  actively  malicious  and  distasteful, 
was  tainted  with  a  lurking  dread.  Thus  to  their 
pleasure  at  the  thought  of  noise  and  London  was 
added  relief  at  the  prospect  of  escape  from  a 
solitude  grown  fearful  since  yesterday.  They 
dressed  with  haste  and  rising  spirits;  and  it  was 
with  undisguised  joy  that  they  collected  their  few 
possessions  and  stuffed  them  into  their  hold-alls. 
William,  whose  toilet  and  preparations  for  the 
journey  were  completed  in  advance  of  his  wife's, 
descended  first  to  the  kitchen,  where,  in  the  con- 

77 


78      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

tinued  and  regretted  absence  of  their  housekeeper, 
he  struggled  valiantly  with  the  making  of  break- 
fast while  Griselda  finished  her  packing.  The 
meal  so  prepared  fell  short  of  complete  success; 
coffee  as  brewed  by  William  was  not  the  same 
beverage  as  coffee  prepared  by  Madame  Peys,  nor 
were  its  tepid  attractions  enhanced  by  the  ab- 
sence of  their  usual  and  plentiful  ration  of  milk. 
Thanks  to  the  defection  of  the  Peys  family,  they 
were  not  only  milkless  but  eggless;  and  such  re- 
mains of  bread  and  butter  as  they  could  find  in 
the  cupboard  were  the  only  accompaniment  to 
William's  suggestion  of  coffee.  In  the  circum- 
stances there  was  but  little  temptation  to  risk  the 
loss  of  the  Brussels  train  by  lingering  over  the 
table  and  less  than  five  minutes  sufficed  for  their 
simple  meal.  Having  dispatched  it,  they 
strapped  their  hold-alls  and  stepped  out  briskly 
on  their  way  to  the  station  and  home  —  the  sun 
still  low  on  the  eastward  ridge  of  the  valley  and 
the  dew  still  heavy  on  the  grass.  They  hardly 
turned  to  look  back  at  the  cottage,  so  glad  were 
they  to  leave  it  behind  them;  and  in  the  elation 
of  their  spirits  they  sped  down  the  path  with  a 
quite  unnecessary  haste.  They  were  escaping 
from  nature  and  solitude,  and  their  hearts  sang 
cheerily  of  Bloomsbury. 

When  they  rounded  the  bend  in  the  path  that 
brought  them  within  sight  of  the  farm  their  first 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      79 

thought  was  that  the  missing  family  had  returned ; 
for  outside  the  gate  were  three  horses,  standing 
riderless  and  with  heads  near  together.  There 
was  something  reassuring  in  the  sight  of  the  beasts 
as  they  stood  in  the  sunlight  shifting  and  flicking 
their  tails,  something  that  gave  the  lie  to  the 
terrors  of  the  night  before;  the  presence  of  horses 
betokened  the  presence  of  men,  and  the  presence 
of  men  dissipated  the  sense  of  mystery  that  h»d 
brooded  over  an  empty  house  with  a  nameless 
grave  in  its  garden.  Griselda  drew  a  comforta- 
ble breath  of  relief  as  she  supposed  they  had  time 
to  call  in  and  settle  the  last  week's  bill  with  Ma- 
dame Peys. 

"  I  do  wish,"  she  pondered  regretfully,  "  that  I 
could  understand  what  she  says.  I  must  say  I 
should  like  to  know  what  the  explanation  is  — 
about  that  grave.  ...  I  suppose  they've  come 
back  to  fetch  away  the  rest  of  the  furniture,  and 
things  —  those  aren't  their  horses,  though !  " 

"  No,"  William  assented,  considering  the  sleek 
strong  beasts,  "  they  have  only  got  cart-horses. 
...  I  wonder."  .  .  . 

A  man  stepped  suddenly  out  from  behind  the 
shifting  horses  —  so  suddenly  that  they  both 
started.  He  had  been  standing  by  the  gate  with 
the  bridles  gathered  in  his  hand,  hidden  by  his 
charges  from  William  and  Griselda  as  they  had 
been  hidden  from  him.  When,  hearing  their 


80      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

voices,  he  stepped  into  sight,  he  stood  with  his 
heels  together,  very  erect  and  staring  at  them  — 
a  young  man  squarely  and  sturdily  built,  with 
under  his  helmet  a  reddish  face  and  a  budding 
black  mustache.  He  was  clad  in  a  tight-fitting 
grayish  uniform,  and  a  sword  hung  by  his  side. 
He  stared  and  the  pair  stared  back  at  him  — 
curiously  but  not  quite  so  openly. 

"  It's  a  soldier,"  Griselda  commented  —  add- 
ing, like  William,  "  I  wonder "  They  both 

wondered  so  much  that  they  hesitated  and  slack- 
ened their  pace;  the  presence  of  a  military  man 
but  complicated  the  problem  of  the  farm. 
Coupled  with  the  absence  of  the  Peys  family,  it 
revived  their  suspicions  of  the  night  before,  their 
suspicions  of  crime  and  a  hasty  flight  from  justice 
.  .  .  and  involuntarily  their  eyes  turned  to  the 
garden,  and  sought  the  outline  of  the  grave  be- 
yond the  gooseberry  bushes. 

"  It  really  does  look,"  Griselda  whispered,  "  as 
if  there  was  something  —  not  right." 

As  she  whispered  the  soldier  rapped  out  a  loud 
monosyllable;  it  was  enunciated  so  curtly  and 
sharply  that  they  started  for  the  second  time  and 
came  to  an  involuntary  halt.  For  the  space  of  a 
second  or  two  they  stood  open-mouthed  and 
flustered  —  and  then  Griselda,  recovering  from 
the  shock,  expressed  her  indignant  opinion. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      81 

"  How  rude !  "  she  said.  "  What  does  he 
shout  at  us  like  that  for?  " 

"  I  suppose,"  her  husband  conjectured,  "  he 
wants  us  to  stop." 

"Well,"  said  Griselda,  "we  have  stopped." 
Her  tone  was  nettled  and  embittered.  It  an- 
noyed her  to  realize  that,  involuntarily  and  in- 
stinctively, she  had  obeyed  an  official  order;  it 
was  not,  she  felt,  what  her  Leaders  would  expect 
from  a  woman  of  her  training  and  caliber.  It 
was  that  and  not  fear  that  disconcerted  her  — 
for,  after  the  first  shock  of  surprise  at  the  man's 
rough  manner,  neither  she  nor  her  husband  were  in 
the  least  overawed;  on  the  contrary,  as  they  stood 
side  by  side  with  their  baggage  in  their  hands, 
gazing  into  the  sunburnt  face  of  the  soldier, 
something  of  the  contempt  they  felt  for  his  species 
was  reflected  in  their  light-blue  eyes.  Of  the  two 
pairs  of  light-blue  eyes  William's  perhaps  were 
the  more  contemptuous:  his  anti-militarism  was 
more  habitual  and  ingrained  than  Griselda's. 

What  William  looked  at  was  a  creature  (the 
soldier)  of  whom  he  knew  little  and  talked  much; 
his  experience  of  the  man  of  war  was  purely  in- 
sular, and  his  attitude  towards  him  would  have 
been  impossible  in  any  but  a  native  of  Britain. 
He  came  of  a  class  —  the  English  lower  middle 
—  which  the  rules  of  caste  and  tradition  of  cen- 


82      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

turies  debarred  from  the  bearing  of  arms;  a  class 
which  might,  in  this  connection,  have  adapted  to 
its  own  needs  the  motto  of  the  House  of  Rohan. 
"  Roi  ne  puis;  prince  ne  daigne;  Rohan  je  suis," 
might  have  been  suitably  Englished  in  the  mouths 
of  William's  fellows  as,  "Officer  I  cannot  be; 
private  I  will  not  be;  tradesman  or  clerk  I  am." 
Further,  he  had  lived  in  surroundings  where  the 
soldier  was  robbed  of  his  terrors;  to  him  the 
wearer  of  the  king's  uniform  was  not  only  a  per- 
son to  whom  you  alluded  at  Labor  meetings  with 
the  certainty  of  raising  a  jeer,  but  a  target  at 
whom  strikers  threw  brickbats  and  bottles  with 
energy  and  practical  impunity.  Should  the  target 
grow  restive  under  these  attentions  and  proceed 
to  return  them  in  kind,  it  was  denounced  in  Parlia- 
ment, foamed  at  by  the  Press,  and  possibly  court- 
martialed  as  a  sop  to  indignant  Labor.  Thus 
handicapped  it  could  hardly  be  looked  on  as  a 
formidable  adversary  .  .  .  and  William,  without 
a  thought  of  fear,  stared  the  field-gray  horseman 
in  the  eyes. 

The  field-gray  horseman,  on  his  side,  stared  the 
pair  of  civilians  up  and  down  —  with  a  glance  that 
matched  the  courtesy  of  his  recent  manner  of  ad- 
dress—  until,  having  surveyed  them  sufficiently, 
he  called  over  his  shoulder  to  some  one  unseen 
within  the  house.  There  was  something  in  his 
face  and  the  tone  of  his  loud-voiced  hail  that  made 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      83 

the  temper  of  Griselda  stir  within  her;  and  for 
the  second  time  that  morning  she  wished  for  a 
command  of  the  language  of  the  country  —  this 
time  for  the  purposes  of  sharp  and  scathing  re- 
buke. As  a  substitute  she  assumed  the  air  of  cold 
dignity  with  which  she  had  entered  the  taxi  on  the 
night  of  her  protest  at  the  meeting. 

14  Come  on,  William,"  she  said.  "  Don't  take 
any  notice  of  him,  dear." 

The  advice,  though  well  meant,  was  unfortu- 
nate. As  William  attempted  to  follow  both  it 
and  his  wife,  the  soldier  moved  forward  and 
struck  him  a  cuff  on  the  side  of  the  head  that 
deposited  him  neatly  on  the  grass.  Griselda, 
who  —  in  order  to  convey  her  contempt  for  of- 
ficial authority  and  disgust  at  official  insolence  — 
had  been  pointedly  surveying  the  meeting  of  hill 
and  horizon,  heard  a  whack  and  scuffle,  a  gut- 
tural grunt  and  a  gasp;  and  turned  to  see  Wil- 
liam, with  a  hand  to  his  cheek,  lying  prone  at  the 
feet  of  his  assailant.  She  rounded  on  the  man 
like  a  lion,  and  perhaps,  with  her  suffragette  train- 
ing behind  her,  would  have  landed  him  a  cuff  in 
his  turn;  but  as  she  raised  her  arm  it  was  caught 
from  behind  and  she  found  herself  suddenly  help- 
less in  the  grasp  of  a  second  gray-clad  soldier  — 
who,  when  he  heard  his  comrade's  hail,  had  come 
running  out  of  the  house. 

"  Let  me  go,"  she  cried,  wriggling  in  his  grasp 


84      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

as  she  had  wriggled  aforetime  in  the  hands  of  a 
London  policeman,  and  kicking  him  deftly  on  the 
shins  as  she  had  been  wont  to  kick  Robert  on  his. 
For  answer  he  shook  her  to  the  accompaniment  of 
what  sounded  like  curses  —  shook  her  vehe- 
mently, till  her  hat  came  off  and  her  hair  fell 
down,  till  her  teeth  rattled  and  the  landscape 
danced  about  her.  When  he  released  her,  with 
the  final  indignity  of  a  butt  with  the  knee  in  the 
rear,  she  collapsed  on  the  grass  by  her  husband's 
side  in  a  crumpled,  disreputable  heap.  There  for 
a  minute  or  two  she  lay  gasping  and  inarticulate 
—  until,  as  her  breath  came  back  and  the  land- 
scape ceased  to  gyrate,  she  dragged  herself  up 
into  a  sitting  position  and  thrust  back  the  hair 
from  her  eyes.  William,  a  yard  or  two  away, 
was  also  in  a  sitting  position  with  his  hand 
pressed  against  his  cheekbone;  while  over  him 
stood  the  assailants  in  field-gray,  apparently 
snapping  out  questions. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  she  heard  him  protest 
feebly,  "  I  tell  you  I  don't  understand.  Griselda, 
can't  you  explain  to  them  that  I  don't  speak 
French?" 

"  Comprends  pas,"  said  Griselda,  swallowing 
back  tears  of  rage.  "  Comprends  pas  —  so  it's 
not  a  bit  of  good  your  talking  to  us.  Parlez  pas 
frangais  —  but  that  won't  prevent  me  from  re- 
porting you  for  this  disgraceful  assault.  You 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      85 

cowards  —  you  abominable  cowards!  You're 
worse  than  the  police  at  home,  which  is  saying  a 
good  deal.  I  wonder  you're  not  ashamed  of 
yourselves.  I've  been  arrested  three  times  and 
I've  never  been  treated  like  this." 

At  this  juncture  one  of  the  men  in  field-gray 
seized  William  by  the  collar  and  proceeded  to 
turn  out  his  pockets  —  extracting  from  their  re- 
cesses a  purse,  a  pipe,  a  handkerchief,  a  fountain 
pen,  and  a  green-covered  Cook's  ticket.  He 
snapped  back  the  elastic  on  the  Cook's  ticket,  and 
turned  the  leaves  that  remained  for  the  journey 
home. 

"  London,"  he  ejaculated  suddenly,  pronounc- 
ing the  vowels  in  un-English  fashion  as  O's. 

"  London !  "  his  companion  echoed  him  —  and 
then,  as  if  moved  by  a  common  impulse,  they 
called  on  the  name  of  Heinz. 

There  was  an  answering  hail  from  the  farm- 
house kitchen,  whence  issued  promptly  a  fattish 
young  man  with  a  mug  in  his  hand,  and  a  helmet 
tilted  on  his  nose.  With  him  the  assailants  of 
William  and  Griselda  entered  into  rapid  and 
throaty  explanations;  whereat  Heinz  nodded  as- 
sentingly  as  he  advanced  down  the  garden  path 
to  the  gate,  surveying  the  captives  with  interest 
and  a  pair  of  little  pig's-eyes.  Having  reached 
the  gate  he  leaned  over  it,  mug  in  hand,  and 
looked  down  at  William  and  Griselda. 


86      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

"  English,"  he  said  in  a  voice  that  was  thicker 
than  it  should  have  been  at  so  early  an  hour  of 
the  morning;  "English  —  you  come  from  Lon- 
don? .  .  .  I  have  been  two  years  in  London;  that 
is  why  I  speak  English.  I  was  with  a  hairdresser 
in  the  Harrow  Road  two  years;  and  I  know  also 
the  Strand  and  the  Angel  and  Buckingham  Palace 
and  the  Elephant."  (He  was  plainly  proud  of 
his  acquaintance  with  London  topography.) 
"  All  of  them  I  know,  and  when  we  arrive  in  Lon- 
don I  shall  show  them  all  to  my  friends."  He 
waved  his  hand  vaguely  and  amiably  to  indicate 
his  gray-clad  companions.  "  You  come  from 
London,  but  you  shall  not  go  back  there,  because 
you  are  now  our  prisoners.  I  drink  your  damn 
bad  health  and  the  damn  bad  health  of  your  coun- 
try and  the  damn  bad  health  of  your  king." 

He  suited  the  action  to  the  word  and  drained 
his  mug;  and  having  drained  it  till  it  stood  up- 
right upon  his  nose,  proceeded  to  throw  it  over 
his  shoulder  to  shatter  on  the  brick  path. 
Whether  from  natural  good  temper  or  the  cheer- 
ing effect  of  potations  his  face  was  wreathed  in  an 
amiable  smile  as  he  crossed  his  arms  on  the  bar 
of  the  gate  and  continued  to  address  his  audi- 
ence — 

"  We  shall  take  you  to  our  officer  and  you 
will  be  prisoners,  and  if  you  are  spies  you  will  be 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      87 

There  was  something  so  impossible  about  the 
announcement  that  William  and  Griselda  felt 
their  courage  return  with  a  rush.  Moreover, 
though  the  words  of  Heinz  were  threatening  the 
aspect  of  Heinz  was  not;  his  fat  young  face  with 
its  expansive  and  slightly  inebriated  smile  was 
ridiculous  rather  than  terrifying,  even  under  the 
brim  of  a  helmet.  William,  thankful  for  the 
English  which  had  been  acquired  during  the  two 
years'  hairdressing  in  the  Harrow  Road,  ad- 
monished him  with  a  firmness  intended  to  sober 
and  dismay. 

"  This  is  not  a  time  for  silly  jokes.  I  am 
afraid  that  you  do  not  realize  the  seriousness  of 
the  situation.  I  shall  feel  it  my  duty  to  make  a 
full  report  to  your  superiors  —  when  you  will  find 
it  is  no  laughing  matter.  My  wife  and  I,  pro- 
ceeding quietly  to  the  station,  have  been  grossly 
and  violently  assaulted  by  your  two  companions. 
We  gave  them  no  provocation,  and  the  attack 
was  entirely  uncalled  for.  I  repeat,  I  shall  feel  it 
my  duty  to  report  their  conduct  in  the  very  strong- 
est terms." 

He  felt  as  he  spoke  that  the  reproof  would 
have  carried  more  weight  had  it  been  delivered  in 
a  standing  position;  but  his  head  still  reeled  from 
the  stinging  cuff  it  had  received  and  he  felt  safer 
where  he  was  —  on  the  ground.  It  annoyed  him 
that  the  only  apparent  effect  of  his  words  upon 


88      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Heinz  was  a  widening  of  his  already  wide  and 
owlish  smile. 

"  Oh,  you'll  report  their  conduct,  will  you?" 
he  repeated  pleasantly  and  thickly.  "  And  who 
will  you  report  it  to,  old  son?  " 

William  stiffened  at  the  familiarity,  and  the 
tone  of  his  reply  was  even  colder  and  more  digni- 
fied than  that  of  the  original  rebuke. 

"To  the  nearest  police  authority;  I  shall  not 
leave  Belgium  until  my  complaint  has  been  at- 
tended to.  If  necessary  I  shall  apply  for  redress 
to  the  British  Consul  in  Brussels." 

The  expansive  smile  on  the  face  of  Heinz  was 
suddenly  ousted  by  an  expression  of  infinite  aston- 
ishment. His  fat  chin  dropped,  his  little  eyes 
widened,  and  he  pushed  back  his  helmet,  that  he 
might  stare  the  better  at  William. 

"  Say  it  again,"  he  demanded  —  slowly  and  as 
if  doubtful  of  his  ears.  "  You  shall  apply  to  the 
British  Consul  —  the  British  Consul  at  Brus- 
sels?" 

"  Certainly,"  William  assured  him  firmly;  and 
Griselda  echoed  "  Certainly."  The  threat  they 
judged  had  made  the  desired  impression,  for  so 
blank  and  disturbed  was  the  countenance  of  Heinz 
that  his  two  companions  broke  into  guttural  ques- 
tioning. The  former  hairdresser  checked  them 
with  a  gesture  and  addressed  himself  once  more 
to  William. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      89 

"  I  think,"  he  announced,  "  you  are  balmy  on 
the  crumpet,  both  of  you.  Balmy,"  he  repeated, 
staring  from  one  to  the  other  and  apparently 
sobered  by  the  shock  of  his  own  astonishment. 
Suddenly  a  gleam  of  intelligence  lit  up  his  little 
pig's-eyes  —  he  leaned  yet  further  over  the  gate, 
pointed  a  finger  and  queried  — 

"You  do  not  read  the  newspapers?" 

"  As  a  rule  I  do,"  William  informed  him,  "  but 
we  have  not  seen  any  lately  —  not  since  we  left 
England." 

"  And  how  long  is  it  since  you  left  England?  " 

William  told  him  it  was  over  three  weeks. 

"  Three  weeks,"  the  other  repeated,  "  three 
weeks  without  newspapers  .  .  .  and  I  think  you 
do  not  speak  French,  eh?  " 

"  My  wife,"  William  answered,  "  understands 
it  —  a  little.  But  we  neither  of  us  speak  it." 
His  manner  was  pardonably  irritated,  and  if  he 
had  not  judged  it  imprudent  he  would  have  re- 
fused point-blank  to  answer  this  purposeless  cat- 
echism. Nor  was  his  pardonable  irritation  les- 
sened when  amusement  once  more  gained  the 
upper  hand  in  Heinz.  Suddenly  and  unaccount- 
ably he  burst  into  hearty  laughter  —  rocked  and 
trembled  with  it,  holding  to  the  gate  and  wiping 
the  tears  from  his  cheeks.  Whatever  the  joke  it 
appealed  also  to  his  comrades,  who,  once  it  was 
imparted  between  Heinz's  paroxysms,  joined  their 


90      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

exquisite  mirth  to  his  own.  The  three  stood 
swaying  in  noisy  merriment,  while  Griselda, 
white-faced  and  tight-lipped,  and  William  with  a 
fast  disappearing  left  eye  awaited  in  acute  and 
indignant  discomfort  some  explanation  of  a  jest 
that  struck  them  as  untimely.  It  came  only  when 
Heinz  had  laughed  himself  out.  Wiping  the 
tears  once  more  from  his  eyes,  and  with  a  voice 
still  weakened  by  pleasurable  emotion,  he  gave 
them  in  simple  and  unpolished  language  the  news 
of  the  European  cataclysm. 

"  I  tell  you  something,  you  damn  little  ignorant 
silly  fools.  There  is  a  war  since  you  came  to 
Belgium." 

Probably  they  thought  it  was  a  drunken  jest, 
for  they  made  no  answer  beyond  a  stare,  and 
Heinz  proceeded  with  enjoyment. 

"  A  War.  The  Greatest  that  ever  was.  Ger- 
many and  Austria  —  and  Russia  and  France  and 
Belgium  and  England  and  Servia." 

He  spoke  slowly,  dropping  out  his  words  that 
none  might  fail  of  their  effect  and  ticked  off  on  a 
finger  the  name  of  each  belligerent. 

"  Our  brave  German  troops  have  conquered 
Belgium  and  that  is  why  we  are  here.  We  shall 
also  take  Paris  and  we  shall  also  take  Petersburg 
and  we  shall  also  take  London,  We  shall  march 
through  Regent  Street  and  Leicester  Square  and 
orer  Waterloo  Bridge.  Our  Kaiser  Wilhelm 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      91 

shall  make  peace  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  we 
shall  take  away  all  your  colonies.  What  do  you 
think  of  that,  you  damn  little  fools?  " 

There  are  statements  too  large  as  there  are 
statements  too  wild  for  any  but  the  unusually  im- 
aginative to  grasp  at  a  first  hearing.  Neither 
William  nor  Griselda  had  ever  entertained  the 
idea  of  a  European  War;  it  was  not  entertained 
by  any  of  their  friends  or  their  pamphlets. 
Rumors  of  war  they  had  -always  regarded  as  fool- 
ish and  malicious  inventions  set  afloat  in  the  in- 
terest of  Capitalism  and  Conservatism  with  the 
object  of  diverting  attention  from  Social  Reform 
or  the  settlement  of  the  Woman  Question;  and 
to  their  ears,  still  filled  with  the  hum  of  other 
days,  the  announcement  of  Heinz  was  even  such 
a  foolish  invention.  Nor,  even  had  they  given 
him  credence,  would  they  in  these  first  inexperi- 
enced moments  have  been  greatly  perturbed  or 
alarmed;  their  historical  ignorance  was  so  pro- 
found, they  had  talked  so  long  and  so  often  in 
terms  of  war,  that  they  had  come  to  look  on  the 
strife  of  nations  as  a  glorified  scuffle  on  the  lines 
of  a  Pankhurst  demonstration.  Thus  Griselda, 
taught  by  The  Suffragette,  used  the  one  word 
"  battle  "  for  a  small  street  row  and  the  fire  and 
slaughter  of  Eylau  —  or  would  have  so  used  it, 
had  she  known  of  the  slaughter  of  Eylau.  And 
that  being  the  case,  Heinz's  revelation  of  ruin 


92      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

and  thunder  left  her  calm  —  disappointingly  so. 

"  I  think,"  she  said  loftily,  in  answer  to  his 
question,  "  that  you  are  talking  absolute  non- 
sense." 

There  are  few  men  who  like  to  be  balked  of  a 
sensation  and  Heinz  was  not  among  them.  He 
reddened  with  annoyance  at  the  lack  of  success  of 
his  bombshell. 

'  You  do  not  believe  it,"  he  said.  "  You  do 
not  believe  that  our  brave  German  troops  have 
taken  Belgium  and  will  shortly  take  Paris  and 
London?  Very  well,  I  will  teach  you.  I  will 
show  you.  You  shall  come  with  us  to  our  officer 
and  you  shall  be  shot  for  spies." 

He  came  through  the  gate  and  clambered  into 
his  saddle,  his  companions  following  suit;  Wil- 
liam and  Griselda  instinctively  scrambled  to  their 
feet  and  stood  gazing  up  in  uncertainty  at  the 
three  gray  mounted  men. 

"  Get  on,"  said  Heinz  with  a  jerk  of  his  head 
down  the  valley;  and  as  William  and  Griselda 
still  stood  and  gazed  his  hand  went  clap  to  his 
side  and  a  sword  flashed  out  of  its  sheath.  Gri- 
selda shrieked  in  terror  as  it  flashed  over  Wil- 
liam's head  —  and  William  bawled  and  writhed 
with  pain  as  it  came  down  flat  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Get  on,"  Heinz  repeated  —  adding,  "  damn 
you !  "  and  worse  —  as  the  blade  went  up  again ; 
•and  William  and  Griselda  obeyed  him  without 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      93 

further  hesitation.  Their  heads  were  whirling 
and  their  hearts  throbbing  with  rage;  but  they 
choked  back  its  verbal  expression  and  stumbled 
down  the  valley  path  —  in  the  clutch  of  brute 
force  and  with  their  world  crumbling  about  them. 
It  was  a  most  unpleasant  walk  —  or  rather  trot; 
they  were  bruised,  they  were  aching  from  the 
handling  they  had  received,  and  their  breath  came 
in  sobs  from  the  pace  they  were  forced  to  keep 
up.  Did  they  slacken  it  even  for  an  instant  and 
fall  level  with  the  walking  horses,  Heinz  shouted 
an  order  to  "  Hurry,  you  swine!  "  and  flashed  up 
his  threatening  sword;  whereupon,  to  keep  out  of 
its  painful  and  possibly  dangerous  reach,  they 
forced  themselves  to  a  further  effort  and  broke 
into  a  shambling  canter.  The  sweat  poured  off 
them  as  they  shambled  and  gasped,  casting  anxious 
glances  at  the  horses'  heads  behind  them;  and 
their  visible  distress,  their  panting  and  their  im- 
potent anger,  was  a  source  of  obvious  and  unre- 
strained gratification  to  Heinz  and  his  jovial  com- 
panions. They  jeered  at  the  captives'  clumsy 
running  and  urged  them  to  gallop  faster.  When 
Griselda  tripped  over  a  tussock  and  sprawled  her 
length  on  the  grass,  they  applauded  her  downfall 
long  and  joyously  and  begged  her  to  repeat  the 
performance.  The  jeers  hurt  more  than  the 
shaking,  and  she  staggered  to  her  feet  with  tears 
of  wretchedness  and  outraged  dignity  running 


94      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

openly  down  her  nose  —  seeking  in  vain  for  that 
sense  of  moral  superiority  and  satisfaction  in 
martyrdom  which  had  always  sustained  her  en 
route  to  the  cells  of  Bow  Street.  She  hated  the 
three  men  who  jeered  at  her  miseries  and  could 
have  killed  them  with  pleasure;  every  fiber  of  her 
body  was  quivering  with  wrath  and  amazement. 
Neither  she  nor  William  could  speak  —  they  had 
no  breath  left  in  them  to  speak;  but  every  now 
and  then  as  they  shambled  along  they  turned  their 
hot  faces  to  look  at  each  other  —  and  saw,  each, 
a  beloved  countenance  red  with  exertion  and 
damp  with  perspiration,  a  pair  of  bewildered  blue 
eyes  and  a  gasping  open  mouth.  ...  So  they 
trotted  down  the  valley,  humiliated,  disheveled, 
indignant,  but  still  incredulous  —  while  their 
world  crumbled  about  them  and  Europe  thundered 
and  bled. 


CHAPTER  VII 

LOOKING  back  on  the  morning  in  the 
month  of  August,  nineteen  hundred  and 
fourteen,  when  he  made  his  first  ac- 
quaintance with  war  as  the  soldier  understands  it, 
William  Tully  realized  that  fear,  real  fear,  was 
absent  from  his  heart  until  he  witnessed  the  shoot- 
ing of  the  hostages.  Until  that  moment  he  had 
been  unconvinced,  and,  because  unconvinced,  un- 
afraid; he  had  been  indignant,  flustered,  physi- 
cally sore  and  inconvenienced;  but  always  at  the 
back  of  his  mind  was  the  stubborn  belief  that  the 
pains  and  indignities  endured  by  himself  and  his 
wife  would  be  dearly  paid  for  by  the  perpetrators. 
He  could  conceive  as  yet  of  no  state  of  society  in 
which  Law  and  the  bodily  immunity  of  the  peace- 
ful citizen  was  not  the  ultimate  principle ;  and  even 
the  sight  of  a  long  gray  battalion  of  infantry 
plodding  dustily  westward  on  the  road  by  the 
river  had  not  convinced  him  of  war  and  the  mean- 
ing of  war.  They  came  on  the  trudging  torrent 
of  men  as  they  debouched  from  the  valley  on  to 
the  main  road;  and  their  captors  halted  them  on 

95 


96      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

the  grass  at  the  roadside  until  the  close  gray 
ranks  had  passed.  William  and  Griselda  were 
thankful  for  the  few  minutes'  respite  and  breath- 
ing-space ;  they  wiped  their  hot  faces  and  Griselda 
made  ineffectual  attempts  to  tidy  her  tumbled 
hair.  She  was  reminded  by  her  pressing  need  of 
hairpins  that  they  had  left  their  bags  on  the  scene 
of  their  misfortune,  outside  the  farmhouse  gate; 
they  conversed  about  the  loss  in  undertones,  and 
wondered  if  the  bags  would  be  recovered.  They 
were  not  without  hopes,  taking  into  account  the 
loneliness  of  the  neighborhood.  .  .  .  When  the 
battalion,  with  its  tail  of  attendant  gray  carts, 
had  passed,  Heinz  ordered  them  forward  again 
—  and  they  moved  on,  fifty  yards  or  so  behind  the 
last  of  the  gray  carts,  and  trusting  that  their  goal 
was  at  hand. 

"  If  they're  only  taking  us  as  far  as  the  vil- 
lage," Griselda  panted  hopefully. 

They  were  —  to  the  familiar  little  village  with 
its  miniature  railway  station  between  the  river 
and  the  cliff.  The  column  of  infantry  plodded 
dustily  through  and  past  it,  but  Heinz  followed 
the  rear-guard  only  halfway  down  the  street  be- 
fore he  shouted  to  his  prisoners  to  halt.  They 
halted  —  with  an  alacrity  born  of  relief  and  a 
sense  of  the  wisdom  of  prompt  obedience  to  or- 
ders —  before  an  unpretentious  white  building 
with  a  sentry  stationed  on  either  side  of  the  door. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      97 

Heinz  swung  himself  down  from  his  horse  and 
went  into  the  house,  leaving  William  and  Griselda 
in  charge  of  his  comrades  and  standing  at  the  side 
of  the  road. 

William  and  Griselda  looked  about  them. 
They  had  passed  through  the  place  several  times 
and  were  accustomed  enough  to  its  usual  appear- 
ance to  be  aware  of  the  change  that  had  come  over 
it.  The  rumbling  gray  carts  behind  which  they 
had  tramped  were  already  at  the  end  of  the  vil- 
lage; they  could  see  all  the  sunlit  length  of  the 
street  and  take  stock  of  the  new  unfamiliar  life 
which  filled  it  from  end  to  end. 

It  was  a  life  masculine  and  military;  an  odd 
mixture  of  iron  order  and  disorder;  of  soldiers  on 
duty  and  soldiers  taking  their  ease.  The  street 
itself  was  untidy  and  littered  as  they  had  never 
seen  it  before;  its  center  had  been  swept  clear,  so 
that  traffic  might  pass  unhindered,  but  the  sides 
of  the  road  were  strewn  with  a  jetsam  of  frag- 
mentary lumber.  A  country  cart  that  had  lost  a 
wheel  sat  clumsily  in  front  of  the  church  near  a 
jumble  of  broken  pottery,  and  a  chair  with  its  legs 
in  the  air  was  neighbored  by  trusses  of  straw. 
All  down  the  street  the  doors  stood  widely  open 
—  here  and  there  a  house  with  starred  or  shat- 
tered windows  looked  unkempt  and  forlornly 
shabby.  Beyond  shivered  panes  and  occasional 
litter  of  damaged  crockery  and  furniture  there 


98      WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

was  no  sign  of  actual  violence ;  the  encounter  that 
had  taken  place  there  —  a  cavalry  skirmish  be- 
tween retreating  Belgian  and  advancing  German 
- —  had  left  few  traces  behind  it. 

The  civilians  of  the  village,  with  hardly  an  ex- 
ception, were  invisible.  The  landlord  of  the  cafe 
was  serving  his  soldier  customers,  and  two  labor- 
ers were  unloading  sacks  from  a  miller's  dr-ay 
under  the  eye  of  a  guard;  and  when  William  and 
Griselda  had  been  waiting  for  a  few  minutes  an 
old  man  crossed  the  road  hurriedly  from  opposite 
house  to  house  —  emerging  from  shelter  like  a 
rabbit  from  its  burrow  and  vanishing  with  a  swift 
running  hobble.  As  for  women,  they  saw  only 
two  —  whom  they  were  not  to  forget  easily. 

They  stood,  the  two  women,  a  few  yards  away 
on  the  farther  side  of  the  road;  almost  opposite 
the  door  by  which  Heinz  had  disappeared  and 
with  their  eyes  continually  fixed  on  it.  One  — 
the  elder  —  was  stout  and  gray-headed,  very 
neatly  dressed  in  black  with  a  black  woolen  scarf 
on  her  shoulders ;  her  hands  were  folded,  meeting 
on  her  breast,  and  every  now  and  then  she  bent 
her  head  over  them  while  her  lips  moved  slowly 
and  soundlessly.  At  such  moments  she  closed  her 
eyes,  but  when  she  lifted  her  head  again  they 
turned  steadily  to  the  door.  The  woman  who 
stood  beside  her  was  taller  and  younger,  middle- 
aged,  upright,  and  angular ;  she  also  wore  a  black 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN      99 

dress,  and  above  her  sharp  and  yellowish  features 
an  unbecoming  black  hat  —  a  high-crowned  hat 
with  upstanding  and  rusty  black  bows.  What 
struck  you  about  her  at  the  first  glance  was  her 
extreme  respectability  —  in  the  line  of  her  lean 
shoulders,  in  the  dowdily  conventional  hat;  at  a 
second,  the  fact  that  her  mouth  was  a  line,  so 
tightly  were  her  lips  compressed.  She  also  stood 
with  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  door.  William  and 
Griselda  looked  at  the  pair  curiously;  it  was  odd 
and  uncomfortable  to  see  them  standing  at  the 
side  of  the  road,  their  clothes  dusted  by  passing 
cars,  not  moving  or  speaking  to  each  other. 

For  the  rest,  from  end  to  end  of  the  street  there 
were  only  soldiers  in  sight.  Soldiers  taking  their 
noisy  ease  at  the  tables  outside  the  cafe  —  any 
number  of  them  crowded  round  the  little  green 
tables  while  the  sweating  landlord  ran  to  and  fro 
with  a  jug  or  a  tray  of  glasses  and  an  obvious  de- 
sire to  propitiate.  Other  soldiers,  less  noisy,  led 
a  string  of  horses  to  water;  and  a  rigid  file  of 
them  with  rifles  grounded,  was  drawn  up  on  the 
farther  side  of  the  street  not  far  from  the  wait- 
ing women;  some  ten  or  a  dozen  of  motionless 
helmeted  automata,  with  a  young  officer,  a  ruddy- 
faced  boy,  pacing  up  and  down  the  road  in  front 
of  them.  Through  a  gap  in  the  row  of  white 
houses  William  and  Griselda  saw  another  group 
of  men  in  their  shirt-sleeves  at  work  on  the  rail- 


ioo    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

way  line  —  the  line  that  should  have  taken  them 
to  Brussels;  they  seemed  to  be  repairing  some 
damage  to  the  permanent  way ;  and  farther  down 
the  village  two  or  three  soldier  mechanics  were 
busied  inquisitively  at  the  bonnet  of  a  heavy  gray 
car  drawn  up  at  the  side  of  the  road.  While 
they  waited  and  watched  other  heavy  gray  cars  of 
the  same  pattern  rumbled  into  the  street  and 
along  it;  and  motor  cycles  one  after  another 
hooted  and  clanked  past  them  to  vanish  in  a 
smothering  trail  of  dust. 

In  after  days  William  tried  vainly  to  recall 
what  he  felt  and  thought  in  the  long  hot  minutes 
while  they  waited  for  Heinz  to  reappear  and  for 
something  to  happen.  He  supposed  that  it  was 
the  fiercer  sensations  of  the  time  that  followed 
which  deadened  the  impressions  of  the  half-hour 
or  so  during  which  they  stood  in  the  sunny  street 
expecting  they  knew  not  what;  and  though  he 
remembered,  and  remembered  vividly,  the  out- 
ward show  and  manner  of  the  place  —  its  dusty 
road,  its  swarming  soldiers,  its  passing  cars  and 
cycles  and  the  bearing  of  the  two  silent  women 
—  the  memory  brought  with  it  no  hint  of  his  ac- 
companying attitude  of  mind.  All  he  knew  was 
that  he  had  not  been  seriously  alarmed.  .  .  .  He 
might  have  recalled  his  impressions  with  more 
success  had  he  and  Griselda  discussed  at  the  time 
their  new  and  surprising  experiences;  but  an  at- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     101 

tempt  to  enter  into  conversation  was  promptly 
checked  by  one  of  their  attendant  guards.  What 
he  actually  said  was  unintelligible,  but  his  manner 
conveyed  his  meaning  and  thereafter  the  captives 
considered  their  situation  in  silence. 

He  did  not  know  how  long  it  was  before  the 
hostages  came  out  into  the  street ;  but  he  remem- 
bered—  it  was  his  first  distinct  memory  of  a 
vivid  personal  impression  —  the  instantaneous 
thrill  of  relief  and  excitement  with  which,  after 
their  dreary  wait,  he  saw  the  first  signs  of  move- 
ment at  the  sentry-guarded  door.  A  man  —  a 
soldier  —  came  out  swiftly  and  went  to  the  boy- 
officer,  who  thereupon  stopped  his  pacing;  there 
was  a  clicking  of  heels,  a  salute  and  a  message 
rapidly  delivered;  the  boy-officer  turned  and 
shouted  to  his  men  and  his  men  moved  at  the 
word,  their  rifles  going  to  their  shoulders,  as  if 
by  the  impulse  of  one  will.  William's  eye  was 
caught  and  held  by  the  oiled  swiftness,  the  me- 
chanical simultaneousness  of  the  movement;  he 
stared  at  the  line  of  uniforms,  now  rigidly  inac- 
tive again,  till  a  hand  from  behind  gripped  his 
collar  and  impelled  him  urgently  sideways.  One 
of  his  captors  had  adopted  this  simple  method  of 
informing  him  that  way  must  be  made  for  those 
about  to  issue  from  the  door  of  the  sentry-guarded 
house.  He  choked  angrily  and  brought  up 
against  the  wall  —  to  which  Griselda;  taking 


102    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

warning,  had  hastily  backed  herself.  He  was 
still  gasping  when  the  little  procession  came  out; 
a  soldier  leading  it,  a  couple  more  with  bayonets 
fixed  —  two  civilians  walking  together  —  a  couple 
more  soldiers  with  bayonets  fixed  and  last  of  all 
an  officer,  a  fattish,  youngish,  mustachioed  man 
whom  the  sentries  stiffened  to  salute.  He  came 
a  little  behind  his  men,  paused  on  the  step  and 
stood  there  framed  in  the  doorway  with  his  hand 
resting  on  his  sword,  the  embodiment  of  conscious 
authority;  the  others,  the  two  civilians  and  their 
guard,  went  on  to  the  middle  of  the  road.  There, 
in  the  middle  of  the  road,  they  also  halted  —  the 
soldiers  smartly,  the  captives  uncertainly  —  and 
William  saw  the  two  civilians  clearly. 

One  was  a  short  and  rotund  little  man  who 
might  have  been  sixty  to  sixty-five  and  might  have 
been  a  local  tradesman  —  nearly  bald  and  with 
drooping  mustaches,  rather  like  a  stout  little  seal. 
Essentially  an  ordinary  and  unpretentious  crea- 
ture, he  was  obviously  aiming  at  dignity;  his  chin 
was  lifted  at  an  angle  that  revealed  the  measure 
of  the  roll  of  fat  that  rested  on  his  collar,  and 
he  walked  almost  with  a  strut,  as  if  he  were  at- 
tempting to  march.  Afterwards  William  re- 
membered that  he  had  seen  on  the  little  man's 
portly  stomach  some  sort  of  insignia  or  ribbon; 
at  the  time  it  conveyed  nothing  to  him,  but  he  was 
told  later  that  it  was  the  outward  token  of  a 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     103 

mayor.  He  remembered  also  that  the  little  man'j 
face  was  pale,  with  a  sickly  yellow-gray  pallor; 
and  that  as  he  came  down  the  steps  with  his  head 
held  up  the  drooping  mustache  quivered  and  the 
fat  chin  beneath  it  twitched  spasmodically. 
There  was  something  extraordinarily  pitiful 
about  his  attempt  at  a  personal  dignity  which  na- 
ture had  wholly  denied  him;  William  felt  the  ap- 
peal in  it  even  before  he  grasped  the  situation  the 
meaning  and  need  of  the  pose. 

The  man  who  walked  on  his  left  hand  was 
taller  and  some  years  younger  —  middle-aged, 
slightly  stooping  and  with  slightly  grizzled  hair 
and  beard.  He  belonged  to  an  ordinary  seden- 
tary type,  and  William,  thinking  him  over  later, 
was  inclined  to  set  him  down  a  schoolmaster,  or 
perhaps  a  clerk.  He  wore  steel-rimmed  eye- 
glasses and  his  black  coat  was  shiny  on  the  back 
and  at  the  elbows;  he  had  none  of  his  fellow's 
pomposity,  and  walked  dragging  his  feet  and  with 
his  eyes  bent  on  the  ground.  He  raised  them 
only  when,  as  they  halted  in  the  middle  of  the 
road,  the  respectable  woman  in  black  called  out 
something  —  one  word,  perhaps  his  name  — 
came  up  to  him  and  caught  him  by  the  shoulder. 
He  answered  her  quickly  and  very  briefly  —  with 
hardly  more  than  a  word  —  and  for  a  second  or 
two  after  he  had  spoken  she  stood  quite  still,  with 
her  hand  resting  on  his  shoulder.  Then,  sud- 


104    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

denly,  her  sallow  face  contorted,  her  thin  mouth 
writhed  and  from  it  there  came  a  cry  that  was 
too  fierce  to  be  called  a  groan  and  too  hoarse  to 
be  called  a  scream;  she  flung  herself  forward  on 
the  neck  of  the  grizzled  man  and  her  lean  black 
arms  went  round  it.  He  tried  to  speak  to  her 
again,  but  she  silenced  him  by  drawing  down  his 
head  to  her  breast;  she  held  it  to  her  breast  and 
pressed  it  there;  she  rocked  and  swayed  a  little 
from  side  to  side,  fondling  the  grizzled  hair  and 
kissing  it  to  a  stream  of  broken  endearment. 
Her  grief  was  animal,  alike  in  its  unrestraint  and 
its  terrible  power  of  expression;  convention  fell 
away  from  her;  in  her  tidy  dress  and  with  her 
dowdy  hat  slipping  to  one  shoulder  she  was  primi- 
tive woman  crooning  over  her  dying  mate.  .  .  . 
When  she  was  seized  and  drawn  away  from  her 
man,  her  curved  fingers  clung  to  his  garments. 
Two  soldiers  held  her  and  she  writhed  between 
them  choking  out  a  hoarse  incoherent  appeal  to 
the  officer  standing  in  the  frame  of  the  doorway 
with  his  hand  on  the  hilt  of  his  sword;  she  went 
on  crying  herself  hoarser  as  her  captors  urged 
her  further  down  the  street  and  at  last,  in  mercy 
to  those  who  looked  on,  out  of  sight  through  an 
open  doorway.  William  had  his  hands  to  his 
cars  when  the  door  shut.  No  one,  in  spite  of  the 
persistence  of  her  cries,  came  out  into  the  street 
to  inquire  the  cause  of  her  grief;  but  it  seemed  to 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     105 

William  afterwards  that  he  had  been  aware  here 
and  there  of  furtive  faces  that  appeared  at  upper 
windows. 

While  they  forced  the  dowdy  woman  away 
from  him  her  man  stood  motionless,  turned  away 
from  her  with  his  head  bent  and  his  eyes  on  the 
ground,  so  that  he  started  when  a  soldier  came 
up  behind  him  and  tapped  him  sharply  on  the  arm. 
The  soldier  —  he  had  stripes  on  his  sleeve  and 
seemed  a  person  of  authority  —  held  a  handker- 
chief dangling  from  his  hand;  and,  seeing  it,  the 
grizzled-haired  captive  removed  his  steel-rimmed 
eye-glasses. 

"  Don't  look,"  said  William  under  his  breath. 
"  Griselda,  don't  look." 

For  the  first  time  mortal  fear  had  seized  him 
by  the  throat  and  shaken  him.  He  knew  now 
that  he  stood  before  death  itself,  and  the  power 
to  inflict  death,  and  his  heart  was  as  water  within 
him.  His  wife  was  beside  him  —  and  when  he 
realized  (as  he  did  later  on  with  shame)  that  the 
spasm  of  terror  in  those  first  moments  of  compre- 
hension had  been  stronger  than  the  spasm  of  pity, 
he  excused  it  by  the  fact  of  her  presence.  His 
fear  in  its  forecast  of  evil  took  tangible  shape. 
Griselda  at  his  elbow  had  her  eyes  and  her  mouth 
wide  open;  she  was  engrossed,  fascinated  —  and 
he  was  afraid,  most  horribly  afraid,  that  in  her 
amazement,  her  righteous  pity,  she  might  say  or 


106    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

do  something  that  would  bring  down  wrath  upon 
them.  He  remembered  how  bold  she  had  been 
in  the  face  of  a  crowd,  how  uplifted  by  sacred  en- 
thusiasm !  .  .  .  He  plucked  her  by  the  sleeve 
when  he  whispered  to  her  not  to  look  —  but  she 
went  on  staring,  wide-eyed  and  wide-mouthed,  for 
the  first  time  unresponsive  to  his  touch  and  the 
sound  of  his  voice. 

They  bandaged  the  eyes  of  the  two  prisoners 
—  the  rotund,  pompous  little  mayor  and  the  man 
who  might  have  been  a  schoolmaster.  All  his 
life  William  remembered  the  look  of  the  rotund 
mayor  with  a  bandage  covering  him  from  fore- 
head to  nose-tip  and  his  gray  mustache  quivering 
beneath  it  —  a  man  most  pitifully  afraid  to  die, 
yet  striving  to  die  as  the  situation  demanded. 
And  he  remembered  how,  at  the  moment  the 
bandage  was  knotted  on  the  mayor's  head,  there 
stepped  up  to  him  quietly  the  stout  old  woman 
who  had  stood  praying  on  the  further  side  of  the 
road  with  her  eyes  fixed  upon  the  door.  She  held 
up  a  little  crucifix  and  pressed  it  to  the  quivering 
gray  mustache.  .  .  .  Griselda  clutched  William  by 
the  wrist  and  he  thought  she  was  going  to  cry  out. 

"Don't,  darling,  don't!"  he  whispered. 
"  O'h,  darling,  for  both  our  sakes!  "... 

He  did  not  know  whether  it  was  his  appeal  or 
her  own  terror  and  amazement  that  restrained  her 
from  speech  —  but  she  stood  in  silence  with  her 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     107 

fingers  tightened  on  his  wrist.     He  wished  she 
would  look  away,  he  wished  he  could  look  away 
himself;  he  tried  for  an  instant  to  close  his  eyes, 
but  the  not-seeing  was  worse  than  sight,  and  he 
had  to  open  them  again.     As  he  opened  them  a 
car  roared  by  raising  a  smother  of  dust;  but  as 
the  cloud  of  its  passage  settled  he  saw  that  the 
two  blindfolded  men   were   standing  with  their 
backs  to  a  blank  wall  — -a  yellow-washed,  eight- 
foot  garden  wall  with  the  boughs  of  a  pear-tree 
drooping  over  it.     It  was  opposite  the  yellow- 
washed  wall,  across  the  road,  that  the  file  of  sol- 
diers was  drawn  up;  the  captives  were  facing  the 
muzzles  of  their  rifles  and  the  red-faced  boy-of- 
ficer had  stationed  himself  stiffly  at  the  farther 
end  of  the  file.     The  dust  settled  and  died  down 
—  and  there  followed  (so  it  seemed  to  William) 
an  agony  of  waiting  for  something  that  would  not 
happen.     Long  beating  seconds    (three  or  four 
of  them  at  most)   while  two  men  stood  upright 
with  bandaged  eyes  and  rifles  pointed  at  their 
hearts;  long  beating  seconds,  while  a  bird  fluted 
in  the  pear-tree  —  a  whistle-note  infinitely  care- 
less. .  .  .  And  then  (thank  God  for  it!)  a  voice 
and  a  report  that  were  as  one.  .  .  .  The  man 
with   the  grizzled  hair  threw  out  an  arm   and 
toppled  with  his  face  in  the  dust;  the  mayor  slid 
sideways  against  the  wall  with  the  blood  dribbling 
from  his  mouth. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FUNDAMENTALLY  William  was  no 
more  of  a  coward  than  the  majority  of  his 
fellow-men,  and,  put  to  it,  he  would  have 
emulated  the  shivering  little  mayor  and  tried  to 
strut  gamely  to  his  end;  it  was  as  much  sheer 
bewildered  amazement  as  the  baseness  of  bodily 
terror  that  had  him  by  the  throat  when  he  saw 
the  hostages  done  to  death  —  sickening  and  shak- 
ing him  and,  for  the  moment,  depriving  him  of 
self-control.  Never  before,  in  all  his  twenty- 
eight  years,  had  he  seen  a  man  come  to  his  end; 
so  far  death  had  touched  him  only  once,  and  but 
slightly,  by  the  unseen  passing  of  a  mother  he 
had  not  loved;  thus  the  spectacle  of  violent  and 
bloody  dying  would  of  itself  have  sufficed  to  un- 
nerve and  unman  him.  To  the  natural  shrinking 
from  that  spectacle,  to  his  natural  horror  at  the 
slaying  of  helpless  men,  to  his  pity  and  physical 
nausea  was  added  the  impotent,  gasping  confusion 
of  the  man  whose  faith  has  been  uprooted,  who 
is  face  to  face  with  the  incredible.  Before  his 

108 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     109 

eyes  had  been  enacted  the  impossible  —  the  ugly 
and  brutal  impossible  —  and  beneath  his  feet  the 
foundations  of  the  earth  were  reeling.  The  iron- 
mouthed  guns  and  the  marching  columns  which 
had  hitherto  passed  him  as  a  dusty  pageant  took 
life  and  meaning  in  his  eyes;  they  were  instru- 
ments of  the  ugly  impossible.  There  was  mean- 
ing too  in  the  lonely  grave  and  in  the  lonely  house 
—  whence  men  had  fled  in  terror  of  such  scenes 
as  his  eyes  had  witnessed.  So  far,  to  him,  the 
limit  of  human  savagery  had  been  the  feeding 
through  the  nose  of  divers  young  women  who,  in- 
fected with  the  virus  of  martyrdom,  demanded  to 
be  left  to  die  —  and  now  he  had  witnessed  the 
killing  of  men  who  desired  most  greatly  to  live. 
At  the  time  he  did  not  —  because  he  could  not  — 
analyze  either  the  elements  of  the  situation  or  his 
own  attitude  towards  it;  but  he  knew  afterwards, 
vaguely  but  surely,  that  in  that  one  bewildering 
and  ruthless  moment  the  heart  of  his  faith  was 
uprooted  —  his  faith  in  that  large  vague  entity 
the  People,  in  the  power  of  Public  Opinion  and 
Talk,  in  the  power  of  the  Good  Intention.  .  .  . 
Until  that  moment  he  had  confounded  the  blunder 
with  the  crime,  the  mistaken  with  the  evilly  in- 
tentioned.  It  had  not  seemed  to  him  possible 
that  a  man  could  disagree  with  him  honestly  and 
out  of  the  core  of  his  heart;  it  had  not  seemed  to 
him  possible  that  the  righteous  could  be  righteous 


no    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

and  yet  err.  He  knew  now,  as  by  lightning  flash, 
that  he,  Faraday,  a  thousand  others,  throwing 
scorn  from  a  thousand  platforms  on  the  idea  of 
a  European  War,  had  been  madly,  wildly,  ridic- 
ulously wrong  —  and  the  knowledge  stunned 
and  blinded  him.  They  had  meant  so  well,  they 
had  meant  so  exceedingly  well  —  and  yet  they 
had  prophesied  falsely  and  fact  had  given  them 
the  lie.  Until  that  moment  he  had  been  in  what 
he  called  politics  the  counterpart  of  the  Christian 
Scientist,  despising  and  denying  the  evil  that  now 
laughed  triumphant  in  his  face.  With  its  tri- 
umph perforce  he  was  converted.  War  was: 
men  were  shot  against  walls.  Converted,  though 
as  yet  he  knew  not  to  what  form  of  unknown 
faith. 

He  did  not  see  what  became  of  the  two  dead 
bodies  —  whither  they  were  taken  or  by  whom 
they  were  buried  —  for  they  had  barely  fallen  to 
the  ground  and  his  eyes  were  still  closed  that  he 
might  not  look  on  the  blood  that  was  dribbling 
from  the  mayor's  mustache  when  a  hand  tapped 
him  smartly  on  the  shoulder  and  he  found  Heinz 
standing  beside  him.  He  had  a  glimpse  of  men 
moving  round  the  bodies,  a  glimpse  of  his  wife's 
face  staring  and  sickly,  another  of  a  passing 
motor-cycle,  and  then  Heinz  turned  him  to  the 
door  where  the  sentries  stood  on  guard.  With 
his  captor's  hand  on  his  shoulder  he  went  into  th« 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     ill 

low  white  house,  along  a  little  passage  on  the 
ground  floor  and  into  a  room  on  the  right,  at  the 
back  of  the  house;  Griselda  coming  after  him, 
still  staring  and  white-faced  and  likewise  with  a 
hand  on  her  shoulder.  In  the  room  —  large  and 
sunny  with  windows  looking  on  to  a  garden  — 
was  a  man  in  uniform  and  spectacles  writing  at  a 
table,  and,  erect  and  complacent  beside  him,  the 
fattish  mustachioed  officer  who  had  watched  the 
execution  from  the  doorstep.  He  was  lighting  a 
cigar  with  a  hand  that  did  not  tremble.  William 
and  Griselda  were  escorted  by  their  guards  into 
the  middle  of  the  room  and  planted  there,  stand- 
ing in  front  of  him. 

After  what  he  had  seen,  and  with  the  memory 
of  Heinz's  threats,  William  Tully  believed  most 
firmly  that  he  too  was  about  to  die;  and  with  the 
conviction  there  filled  his  heart  (as  it  would  have 
filled  the  heart  of  any  honest  lover)  a  great  and 
intolerable  pity  for  Griselda,  his  new-made  wife. 
She,  the  woman,  would  be  left  where  he,  the  man, 
would  be  taken  —  and  he  dared  not  turn  his  head 
towards  her  lest  he  might  see  her  face  instinct 
with  the  agony  of  the  coming  parting,  lest,  fore- 
seeing and  resisting  it,  she  should  fling  her  arms 
about  him  and  croon  over  him  as  the  sallow-faced 
woman  in  respectable  black  had  crooned  over  the 
head  of  her  man.  Her  meanings,  the  moanings 
of  a  woman  unknown,  had  torn  at  his  inmost 


112    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

heart;  how  should  he  bear  it  when  Griselda,  his 
darling,  clung  fast  to  him  and  cried  in  vain  for 
pity?  .  .  .  That  he  might  not  see  Griselda's  face 
even  with  the  tail  of  an  eye  he  stared  hard  and 
steadily  over  the  officer's  shoulder.  He  never 
forgot  the  wall-paper  beyond  the  well-filled  gray 
uniform;  it  was  dingy  mud  and  orange  as  to 
ground  with  a  ponderous  pattern  of  clumped  and 
climbing  vegetables.  In  one  spot,  opposite  the 
window,  where  a  blaze  of  sunlight  struck  it,  the 
mud  and  orange  was  transfigured  to  shining  gold 
—  and  William  knew  suddenly  that  he  had  never 
seen  sunlight  before.  For  the  first  time  he  saw  it 
as  vivid  glory  from  heaven  —  when  his  eyes  (as 
he  thought)  would  soon  close  on  its  splendor  for- 
ever. Not  only  his  sight  but  his  every  sense  was 
alert  and  most  sharply  intense;  on  a  sudden  the 
thudding  of  guns  in  the  distance  was  threateningly 
nearer  at  hand,  and,  in  the  interval  between  the 
gun-bursts,  a  wasp  beating  up  and  down  the  win- 
dow-pane filled  the  room  with  a  spiteful  hum- 
ming. 

It  was  while  he  stood  waiting  for  the  doom  he 
believed  to  be  certain,  while  the  German  captain 
looked  him  up  and  down  and  addressed  curt  un- 
intelligible questions  to  those  who  had  made  him 
their  prisoner  —  that  there  stirred  in  the  breast  of 
William  Tully  the  first  faint  sense  of  nationality. 
He  did  not  recognize  it  as  such,  and  it  was  not  to 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     113 

be  expected  that  he  should,  since  his  life  for  the 
last  few  strenuous  years  had  been  largely  molded 
on  the  principle  that  the  love  of  one's  country 
was  a  vice  to  be  combated  and  sneered  at.  If  you 
had  told  him  a  short  day  earlier  that  the  thought 
of  the  soil  he  was  born  on  could  move  and  thrill 
and  uplift  him,  he  would  have  stared  and  despised 
you  as  a  jingo,  that  most  foolish  and  degraded  of 
survivals;  yet  with  his  eyes  (as  he  thought)  look- 
ing their  last  on  the  blazing  gold  that  was  sun- 
light, with  the  sword  suspended  over  his  trem- 
bling head,  something  that  was  not  only  his  pitiful 
love  for  Griselda,  something  that  was  more  than 
his  decent  self-respect,  fluttered  and  stirred  within 
him  and  called  on  him  to  play  the  man.  It  bade 
him  straighten  his  back  before  men  of  an  out- 
landish race,  it  bade  him  refrain  from  pleading 
and  weakness  before  those  who  were  not  of  his 
blood;  and  for  the  first  time  for  many  years  he 
thought  of  himself  as  a  national,  a  man  of  the 
English  race.  Not  consciously  as  yet  and  with  no 
definite  sense  of  affection  for  England  or  impulse 
to  stand  by  her  and  serve  her;  but  with  a  vague, 
unreasoning,  natural  longing  for  home  and  the 
narrow  things  of  home.  It  mattered  not  that  the 
England  he  longed  for  was  small,  suburban, 
crowded  and  noisily  pretentious;  he  craved  for  it 
in  the  face  of  death,  as  other  men  crave  for  their 
spacious  fenlands  or  the  sweep  of  their  open 


114    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

downs.  England  as  he  knew  her  called  him,  not 
with  the  noisy  call  of  yesterday,  but  in  a  voice  less 
strident  and  more  tender;  he  knew  now  that  it 
was  dreadful  to  die  away  from  her.  Instinc- 
tively, thinking  on  London,  he  drew  himself  up 
to  the  height  of  his  five  foot  five  and  —  as  the 
mayor  had  done  before  him  —  he  lifted  his  chin 
in  would-be  defiance  and  dignity. 

There  —  with  the  attempt  to  subdue  the 
trembling  flesh  and  defy  brute  insolence  and 
tyranny  —  the  resemblance  between  the  two 
men's  cases  ended.  For  the  time  being  William 
ran  no  risk  of  a  violent  and  bloody  ending;  there 
was  no  further  need  of  an  example  and  he  had  of- 
fended the  conqueror  only  by  his  poor  little  pres- 
ence. Further  —  though  he  expressed  his  enjoy- 
ment of  it  less  noisily  and  emphatically  than  his 
three  subordinates  had  done  —  the  humor  of  his 
prisoner's  situation  appealed  to  Heinz's  superior 
officer  almost  as  much  as  it  had  appealed  to  Heinz 
himself.  He  grinned  perceptibly  as  he  questioned 
the  couple  in  his  somewhat  halting  English; 
chuckled  audibly  when  they  confirmed  his  sub- 
ordinate's statement  as  to  their  complete  igno- 
rance of  the  European  upheaval;  and  when  he 
had  elicited  the  fact  that  the  hapless  pair  had 
been  spending  their  honeymoon  in  the  secluded 
valleys  of  Ardennes  he  removed  his  cigar  from  his 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     115 

mustachioed  lips  that  he  might  chuckle  long  and 
unhindered. 

"  Honeymoon,"  he  repeated,  his  stout  shoul- 
ders trembling  with  merriment.  "  In  a  nice  quiet 
place,  wiz  no  one  to  interrupt  zee  kissings. 
Never  mind  —  you  will  have  a  very  good  honey- 
moon with  us  and  you  will  very  soon  be  able  to 
go  back  to  England.  Just  so  soon  as  the  Sher- 
man Army  shall  have  been  there.  You  should  be 
very  pleased  that  you  are  safe  with  us:  it  is  more 
dangerous  to  be  in  London." 

William,  with  his  nerves  tuned  up  to  face  a 
firing  party,  withered  miserably  under  heavy  joc- 
ularity. He  knew  instinctively  that  his  life  was 
saved  to  him;  but  the  assurance  of  safety  was 
conveyed  in  a  jeer,  and  at  the  moment  (so  oddly 
are  we  made)  the  jeer  hurt  more  than  the  assur- 
ance of  safety  relieved  him.  He  had  mastered 
his  anguish  and  strung  himself  up  —  to  be  treated 
as  a  figure  of  fun;  the  spectacled  clerk  at  the  writ- 
ing-table was  laughing  so  heartily  that  he  had  to 
remove  his  glasses  and  wipe  them  before  he  con- 
tinued his  labors.  William  tingled  all  over  with 
helpless  rage  as  Griselda  tingled  beside  him. 
But  yesterday  he  would  have  told  you  loftily  that 
both  he  and  his  wife  were  inured  to  public,  above 
all  to  official,  ridicule;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  brave 
ridicule  with  an  approving  audience  in  the  back- 


u6    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ground,  another  to  face  it  unapplauded,  un- 
crowned with  the  halo  of  the  martyr.  .  .  .  They 
reddened  and  quivered  whilst  incomprehensible 
witticisms  passed  between  the  captain  and  his 
clerk.  It  was  an  intense  relief  when  a  nod  and  a 
brief  order  signified  that  the  jest  was  sufficiently 
enjoyed  and  their  audience  with  the  captain  at  an 
end.  They  were  too  thankful  even  to  resent  the 
roughness  with  which  Heinz  collared  his  man 
while  his  comrade  collared  Griselda. 


CHAPTER  IX 

ONE  of  the  features  of  the  interview  that 
struck  William  later  on  was  this  —  dur- 
ing all  the  long  minutes  that  it  lasted  Gri- 
selda  had  spoken  no  words.  For  once  the  tumult 
and  amazement  of  her  soul  was  beyond  her  glib 
power  of  expression  and  it  was  only  as  they  came 
into  the  open  air  that  —  for  the  first  time  since 
she  had  seen  the  hostages  die  —  she  unclosed  her 
lips  and  spoke. 

"What  are  they  going  to  do  with  us?"  she 
asked.  Her  voice  was  husky  and  uncertain,  and 
the  words  came  out  in  little  jerks. 

William  gave  the  question  no  answer:  for  one 
thing  because  his  ignorance  of  their  destiny  was 
as  thorough  as  his  wife's;  for  another  because 
speech,  by  reason  of  Heinz's  firm  grip  on  his 
collar,  was  so  difficult  as  to  be  almost  impossible. 
The  man  had  his  knuckles  thrust  tightly  between 
shirt  and  skin;  William  purpled  and  gasped  as  he 
trotted  down  the  street  with  a  collar  stud  pressing 
on  his  windpipe.  Behind  him  when  he  started 

117 


ii8    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

came  Griselda  and  her  guard;  as  he  could  not 
twist  his  head  to  look  over  his  shoulder  he  had 
no  suspicion  that  the  couples  had  parted  com- 
pany, and  it  was  not  until  his  captor  turned  him 
sharply  to  the  right  down  a  by-road  leading  to 
the  station  that  he  discovered,  in  rounding  the 
corner,  that  his  wife  and  her  escort  were  no 
longer  following  in  his  footsteps.  The  momen- 
tary sidelong  glimpse  he  caught  of  the  road  gave 
him  never  a  sight  of  Griselda;  she  had  vanished 
without  word  or  sign.  For  a  moment  he  could 
hardly  believe  it  and  walked  on  stupidly  in  silence ; 
then,  the  stupor  passing,  his  terror  found  voice 
and  he  clamored. 

"  Where's  my  wife?  "  he  cried  out  and  writhed 
instinctively  to  free  himself.  His  reward  was  a 
tightening  of  the  German's  strangle-hold,  some 
most  hearty  abuse  and  some  even  heartier  kicks. 
Under  the  punishment  he  lost  his  foothold  and 
would  have  fallen  but  for  Heinz's  clutch  upon  his 
collar;  when  the  punishment  was  over  he  was 
brought  up  trembling  and  choking.  In  that  mo- 
ment he  suffered  the  fiercest  of  torments,  the  fire 
of  an  ineffectual  hate.  He  hated  Heinz  and 
could  have  torn  him;  but  he  had  been  taught  the 
folly  of  blind  wrestling  with  the  stronger  and, 
for  Griselda's  sake,  he  swallowed  his  fury  and 
cringed. 

"  Where  is  she?  "  he  begged  most  humbly  and 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     119 

pitifully  as  Heinz  thrust  him  forward  again. 
"  For  mercy's  sake  tell  me  what  you  have  done 
with  my  wife  —  with  my  wife?  ...  If  you  will 
only  let  me  know  where  she  is?  That's  all  — 
just  to  let  me  know." 

He  was  answered  by  the  silence  of  contempt 
and  a  renewed  urge  along  the  road;  he  obeyed 
because  he  could  do  no  other,  whimpering  aloud 
in  the  misery  of  this  new  and  sharpest  of  mis- 
fortunes. As  he  pled  and  whimpered  terrible 
thoughts  came  hurrying  into  his  brain;  all  things 
were  possible  in  these  evil  times  and  among  these 
evil  men  —  and  there  was  a  dreadful,  hideously 
familiar  phrase  anent  "  licentious  soldiery " ;  a 
phrase  that  had  once  been  just  a  phrase  and  that 
was  now  a  present  horror  beating  hard  in  his 
burning  head.  He  stumbled  on  with  the  tears 
running  down  his  cheeks,  and  discovered  suddenly 
that  he  was  whispering  under  his  breath  the  name 
of  God  —  all  things  else  having  failed  him.  He 
did  not  realize  that  he  was  sobbing  and  shedding 
great  tears  until  halfway  along  the  road  when  a 
German  soldier  met  them.  The  man  as  he  passed 
turned  his  head  to  laugh  at  the  sight  of  a  face 
grotesque  and  distorted  in  its  wretchedness; 
whereupon  there  flared  up  again  in  William  that 
new  sense  of  blood  and  breed  and  with  it  an  in- 
stant rush  of  shame  that  he  had  wept  before  these 
—  Germans !  He  gulped  back  his  tears,  strore 


120    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

to  stiffen  his  face  and  clenched  his  hands  to  en- 
dure. 

He  had  need  in  the  hours  that  came  after  of  all 
his  powers  of  endurance  alike  of  body  and  of 
mind.  The  day  that  already  seemed  age-long 
was  far  from  being  at  its  height  when  Griselda 
was  taken  away  from  him  and  all  through  the 
heat  till  close  upon  sundown  he  was  put  to  hard 
physical  toil.  Level  with  the  village  the  railway 
line  had  been  torn  up  and  the  little  wayside  sta- 
tion was  a  half-burnt  mass  of  wreckage ;  a  detach- 
ment of  retreating  Belgians  had  done  their  best 
to  destroy  it,  had  derailed  an  engine  and  half  a 
dozen  trucks  and  done  such  damage  as  time  al- 
lowed to  a  stretch  of  the  permanent  way.  In  its 
turn  a  detachment  of  Germans  was  hard  at  work 
at  removal  of  the  wreckage  and  repairs  to  the 
line;  and  into  their  service  they  had  pressed  such 
villagers  as  had  not  fled  at  their  approach.  A 
cowed,  unhappy  band,  they  toiled  and  sweated, 
dug,  carried  loads  and  leveled  the  broken  soil; 
some  stupidly  submissive,  some  openly  sullen  to 
their  captors,  some  pitiably  eager  to  please:  all 
serfs  for  the  time  being  and  all  of  them  ignorant 
of  what  the  next  hour  might  bring  forth  of  fur- 
ther terror  or  misfortune. 

To  this  captive  little  company  William  Tully 
was  joined,  handed  over  by  Heinz  to  its  task- 
master —  to  become  of  them  all  the  most  pitiable, 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     121 

because  for  the  first  time  in  all  his  days  set  to  bend 
his  back  and  use  his  muscles  in  downright  labor 
of  the  body.  What  to  others  was  merely  hard- 
ship, to  him  became  torment  unspeakable;  he 
wearied,  he  sweated,  he  ached  from  head  to  heel. 
When  he  pulled  at  heavy  wreckage  he  cut  his  soft 
clumsy  fingers ;  when  he  dragged  a  load  or  carried 
it  he  strained  his  unaccustomed  back.  His  hands 
bled  and  blistered  and  the  drops  of  perspiration 
poured  off  him;  when  he  worked  slowly  because 
of  his  weariness  of  lack  of  skill,  authority  made 
no  allowance  for  either  and  a  blow  often  followed 
a  curse.  Sometimes  incomprehensible  orders 
were  shouted  at  him  and  he  would  run  to  obey 
confusedly,  for  fear  of  the  punishment  meted  out 
without  mercy  to  the  dilatory  —  guessing  at  what 
was  required  of  him,  sometimes  rightly  and  some- 
times wrongly.  The  day  remained  on  his  mind 
as  an  impression  of  muddled  terror  and  panic  in- 
tense and  unceasing. 

When  he  thought  he  was  not  being  watched  he 
would  lift  his  head  from  his  toil  and  strain  his 
eyes  this  way  and  that  in  the  hope  of  a  glimpse  of 
Griselda.  Unspeakably  greater  than  his  fear  for 
himself  was  the  measure  of  his  fear  for  his  wife. 
He  knew  that  somewhere  she  must  be  held  by 
force  in  the  same  way  that  he  was  held,  other- 
wise she  would  have  sought  him  out  long  ere  this, 
and,  even  if  not  allowed  to  approach  or  speak 


122    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

would  have  managed  to  see  him  and  make  him 
some  sign  that  his  heart  might  be  set  at  rest. 
His  brain  was  giddy  with  undefined  horror  and 
once  or  twice  he  started  and  raised  his  head  im- 
agining that  Griselda  was  calling  to  him.  Once 
when  he  looked  up  his  eye  caught  the  bluff  tower- 
ing over  the  valley  and  he  remembered  with  an 
incredulous  shock  that  it  was  only  yesterday  that 
he  and  his  wife,  stretched  out  on  the  turf,  had 
watched  the  galloping  of  the  ants  of  soldiers  be- 
neath it  —  that  it  was  not  a  day  since  they  had 
listened  indifferently  to  the  mutter  of  guns  in  the 
distance  and  talked  with  superior  detachment  of 
maneuvers  and  the  folly  of  militarism.  Side  by 
side  on  the  short-cropped  turf  they  had  watched 
unmoved  and  listened  without  misgiving.  Only 
yesterday  —  nay,  only  this  morning  when  the  sun 
rose  —  the  world  was  the  world  and  not  hell. 

He  knew  though,  engrossed  by  his  private 
agony,  he  did  not  give  it  much  heed,  that  all  the 
afternoon  there  was  heavy  traffic  on  the  road  that 
ran  through  the  village,  traffic  going  this  way  and 
that;  now  and  again  through  the  clatter  of  the 
work  around  him  its  rumble  came  to  his  ears. 
Noisy  cars  went  by  and  heavy  guns,  regiments  of 
infantry  and  once  or  twice  a  company  of  swift- 
moving  horse  that  sped  westward  in  a  flurry  of 
dust.  As  the  hot,  industrious  hours  crawled  by 
even  hii  terror  for  Griselda  was  swallowed  u 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     123 

in  the  numbing  and  all-pervading  sense  of  bodily 
exhaustion  and  ill-being,  in  the  consciousness  of 
throbbing  head,  parched  moutlji  and  miserable 
back.  At  midday,  when  the  captives  were  doled 
out  a  ration  of  meat  and  bread,  he  lay  like  a  log 
for  the  little  space  during  which  he  was  allowed 
to  rest;  and,  resting,  he  dreaded  from  the  bottom 
of  his  soul  the  inevitable  call  back  to  work.  With 
it  all  was  the  hopeless,  the  terrifying  sense  of 
isolation;  he  was  removed  even  from  his  fellow- 
sufferers,  held  apart  from  them  not  only  by  the 
barrier  of  their  alien  speech  but  by  his  greater 
feebleness  and  greater  physical  suffering.  Only 
once  during  those  sun-smitten  and  aching  hours 
did  he  feel  himself  akin  to  any  of  the  men  around 
him  —  when  a  flat-capped,  sturdy  young  German 
soldier,  taking  pity  on  his  manifest  unfitness  for 
the  work,  muttered  some  good-natured,  incom- 
prehensible encouragement  and  handed  him  a  bot- 
tle to  drink  from.  The  sharp  taste  of  beer  was 
a  liquid  blessing  to  William's  dry  tongue  and 
parched  throat;  he  tilted  the  bottle  and  drank  in 
great  gulps  till  he  choked;  whereat  the  flat-capped 
German  boy-soldier  laughed  consumedly  but  not 
unkindly. 

It  must  have  been  well  on  in  the  afternoon  — 
for  the  shadows  were  beginning  to  lengthen 
though  the  sun  burned  hotly  as  ever  —  when  over 
the  noises  of  the  toil  around  him  and  over  the 


124    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

rumble  of  traffic  on  the  road  the  persistent  beat 
of  guns  became  loud  enough  to  make  itself  notice- 
able. All  day  William  had  heard  it  at  intervals; 
during  his  brief  rest  at  midday  it  had  been  fre- 
quent but  distant;  now  it  had  spurted  into  sudden 
nearness  and  was  rapid,  frequent,  continuous.  A 
little  group  of  his  fellow-toilers  looked  up  from 
their  work  as  they  heard  the  sound,  drew  closer 
together  and  exchanged  mutterings  till  an  order 
checked  them  sharply;  and  even  after  the  order 
was  rapped  out  one  square-shouldered,  brown- 
faced  countryman  continued  to  stare  down  the 
valley  with  stubbornly  determined  eyes. 

William's  eyes  followed  the  countryman's,  and 
for  a  moment  saw  nothing  but  what  he  had  seen 
before  —  cliffs,  the  river  and  the  hot  blue  sky, 
without  a  feather  of  cloud  to  it;  then,  suddenly, 
away  down  the  valley,  there  puffed  out  a  ball  of 
white  smoke,  and  before  it  had  faded  another. 
The  man  with  the  stubborn  eyes  grunted  some- 
thing beneath  his  breath  and  turned  again  to  his 
work;  William,  continuing  to  gaze  curiously  at 
the  bursting  puffs,  was  reminded  of  his  duties  by 
a  louder  shout  and  the  threat  of  a  lifted  arm. 
He,  too,  bent  again  and  with  haste  to  his  work; 
to  look  up  furtively  as  the  thunder  deepened  and 
see  always  those  bursts  of  floating  cloud  down 
the  valley  or  against  the  hot  horizon. 

He  knew,  or  rather  guessed,  in  after  days  when 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    125 

his  sublime  ignorance  of  all  things  military  had 
been  tempered  by  the  newspapers,  by  daily  war- 
talk  and  by  actual  contact  with  the  soldier,  that 
the  sudden  appearance  of  those  bursting  puffs  had 
indicated  some  temporary  and  local  check  to  the    , 
advancing  German   divisions,   that   a   French  or  { 
Belgian  force  must  have  pushed  or  fought  its  way   : 
across  the  triangular  plateau  between  the  Meuse   ; 
and  its  tributary;  must  have  driven  before  them 
the  Germans  in  the  act  of  occupying  it,  must  have 
brought  up  their  guns  and  commanded  for  the 
moment  a  stretch  of  the  lateral  valley  and  the  line 
of  communications  along  it.     It  was  not  left  long 
in  unmolested  possession  thereof;  nearer  guns  an- 
swered it  swiftly  from  all  directions,  from  other 
heights  and  from  the  valley;  shells  whined  over- 
head, from  time  to  time  the  ground  shook,  and  it 
dawned  upon  William,  as  he  looked  and  listened, 
that  what  he  saw  was  a  battle. 

At  first  he  was  more  impressed  by  the  thought 
than  he  was  by  the  actuality  —  since  the  effects 
of  the  conflict  were  not  in  the  beginning  terrible. 
True  there  was  something  threatening  in  the 
near-by  thudding  of  a  German  battery  when  first 
it  made  itself  heard.  But  such  harm  as  it  in- 
flicted was  unseen  by  William,  and  for  the  space 
of  an  hour  or  so  it  drew  no  returning  fire  and  the 
village  stood  untouched  and  undamaged.  But  as 
the  evening  drew  in  the  thunder  deepened  and 


126    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

quickened;  both  sides,  it  would  seem,  had  brought 
up  reinforcements,  and  guns  opened  fire  from  new 
and  unexpected  places,  from  heights,  from  behind 
garden  walls.  Down  the  road  along  which  Wil- 
liam had  been  urged  with  ungentleness  by  Heinz 
a  gun-team  clattered  and  jingled  at  breakneck 
speed;  it  pulled  up  close  to  the  railway  line,  not 
fifty  yards  from  the  spot  where  the  prisoners  were 
working  in  the  shadow  of  a  clump  of  young  trees ; 
the  gun  was  placed  swiftly  in  position,  the  horses 
were  led  away  and  after  a  momentary  interval  the 
men  began  to  fire  —  steadily,  swiftly,  on  the  or- 
der. William  watched  them  with  his  mouth  wide 
open  till  reminded  smartly  of  his  idleness;  they 
were  so  swift,  precise  and  machine-like.  It  re- 
quired an  effort  of  the  imagination  to  remember 
what  they  were  doing. 

"  Killing,"  he  said  to  himself;  "  those  men  are 
killing!  "  And  he  found  himself  wondering  what 
their  faces  looked  like  while  they  killed? 
Whether  they  liked  doing  it?  .  .  . 

He  supposed  later  (when  that  first  ignorance  of 
things  military  was  a  little  less  sublime)  that  the 
firing  from  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the 
village  had  at  first  inflicted  but  little  damage  on 
the  opposing  forces  on  the  heights;  at  any  rate  it 
remained  practically  unanswered  till  close  upon 
sunset,  the  French  or  Belgian  gunners  concentrat- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    127 

ing  their  fire  upon  enemies  nearer,  more  aggres- 
sive, or  more  vulnerably  placed.  Perhaps  (he 
never  knew  for  certain)  they  had  got  the  better, 
for  the  time  being,  of  those  other  more  aggres- 
sive or  more  vulnerable  opponents;  perhaps  they 
had  received  reinforcements  which  had  enabled 
them  to  push  higher  up  the  valley  or  had  at  last 
been  punished  by  a  fire  hitherto  ineffectual;  what- 
ever the  cause,  as  the  sun  grew  red  to  the  west- 
ward, a  first  shell  screamed  on  to  the  dusty  road 
outside  the  village  and  burst  in  a  pother  of  smoke 
and  flying  clods.  William  heard  the  burst  and 
saw  the  cloud  rise;  he  was  still  round-eyed  when 
another  shell  screamed  overhead  to  find  its  billet 
in  a  garden  wall  a  few  yards  behind  the  battery, 
scattering  the  stones  thereof  and  splintering  the 
boughs  of  an  apple-tree.  A  shower  of  broken 
fragments  came  pattering  about  the  station ;  Wil- 
liam was  perhaps  too  much  stupefied  by  pain  and 
weariness  to  understand  the  extent  of  his  danger 
but  several  of  his  fellows  stirred  uneasily  and  two 
of  them  threw  down  their  spades  and  started  in 
headlong  flight.  They  were  brought  up  swiftly 
by  the  threat  of  a  bayonet  in  their  path;  one  of 
them  came  back  sullenly  dumb,  the  other  whim- 
pering aloud  with  a  hand  pressed  to  his  face. 
William  saw  that  his  cheek  was  bleeding  where 
a  flying  fragment  had  caught  it.  He  was  looking 


128    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

at  the  man  as  he  nursed  his  torn  face  and  be- 
moaned himself  when  a  third  shell  struck  what 
remained  of  the  station  roof. 

William  did  not  know  whether  he  fell  on  his 
face  instinctively  or  was  thrown  by  the  force  of 
the   explosion;  he   remembered  only  that  as  he 
scrambled  to  his  feet,  half-deafened  and  crying 
for  help,  he  saw  through  a  settling  cloud  of  dust 
the  disappearing  backs  of  some  three  or  four  men 
who  were  all  of  them  running  away  from  him. 
He  was  seized  with  a  mortal  terror  of  being  left 
alone  in  this  torment  of  thunder  and  disaster ;  he 
believed  he  must  be  hurt,  perhaps  hurt  to  the 
death,    and   a   pang  of  rage   and  self-pity  went 
through  him  at  the  thought  of  his  desertion  by 
his    fellows.     He    started    after    the    vanishing 
backs,  calling  out  to  them  to  wait,  abusing  and 
appealing,    and   stumbling  over   ruin   as   he   ran. 
The   distant   gunners   had   found   their   enemies' 
range,  and  he  had  not  made  half  a  dozen  yards 
when  he  ducked  to  the  threat  of  another  shell  that 
burst,    as    he    thought,    close    beside    him.     He 
cringed  and  shivered  for  a  moment,  covering  his 
eyes  with  his  hands;  then,  finding  himself  unin- 
jured, darted  off  at  an  angle,  still  shielding  his 
eyes    and    gasping   out,    "  God,    oh    God  —  for 
mercy's  sake,  oh  God !  "     He  knew  in  every  fiber 
of  his  trembling  body  that  he  was  about  to  die, 
and  his  prayer  was  meant  not  only  for  himself 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     129 

but  for  Griselda.  As  he  ran  on  blindly,  an  ani- 
mal wild  and  unreasoning,  a  hand  caught  him 
above  the  ankle  and  he  screamed  aloud  with  rage 
and  terror  at  finding  himself  held  fast. 

"  Let  me  go,"  he  cried  struggling;  then,  as  the 
hand  still  gripped,  bent  down  to  wrest  himself 
free  and  looked  into  a  face  that  he  knew  —  a 
young  plump  face  with  a  budding  mustache  sur- 
mounted by  a  flat  German  cap.  It  was  twisted 
now  into  a  grin  of  agony,  but  all  the  same  he 
recognized  the  face  of  the  German  boy-soldier 
who  had  dealt  kindly  with  him  that  afternoon  in 
the  matter  of  the  bottle  of  beer.  He  was  lying 
on  his  back  and  covered  from  the  middle  down- 
wards with  a  litter  of  broken  beam  and  ironwork 
blown  away  from  the  ruin  of  the  station.  The 
effect  of  the  recognition  on  William  was  curiously 
and  instantly  sobering;  he  was  no  longer  alone  in 
the  hell  where  the  ground  reeled  and  men  ran 
from  him;  he  was  no  longer  an  animal  wild  and 
unreasoning,  but  a  man  with  a  definite  human  re- 
lationship to  the  boy  lying  broken  at  his  feet. 
He  began  to  lift  the  wreckage  from  the  crushed 
legs  and  talked  as  he  did  so,  forgetting  that  the 
wounded  man  in  all  likelihood  understood  not  a 
word  of  his  English. 

11  All  right,  I'll  get  it  off;  I'll  help  you.  You 
were  good  to  me  giving  me  a  drink,  so  I'll  stay 
and  help  you.  Otherwise  I  oughtn't  to  wait,  not 


130    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

a  minute  —  you  see,  I  must  look  for  my  wife. 
My  first  duty  is  to  her  —  she's  my  wife  and  I 
don't  know  where  she  is.  But  I  won't  leave  you 
like  this  because  of  what  you  did  for  me  this  after- 
noon." He  wrenched  and  tugged  at  the  shat- 
tered and  entangled  wreckage  till  the  boy  shrieked 
aloud  in  his  torment  —  the  cry  terrified  William 
and  he  desisted,  wringing  his  hands.  "  I'm  sorry, 
I'm  sorry,  but  I  couldn't  help  it.  God  knows  I 
didn't  mean  to  hurt  you  and  if  I  could  be  gentler 
I  would,  but  it's  so  damnably,  damnably  heavy. 
Oh,  God,  if  some  one  would  come  and  help  me,  if 
some  one  would  only  come!  You  see,  it's  so 
heavy  I  can't  move  it  without  hurting  you." 

He  explained  and  apologized  to  ears  that  heard 
not  for  the  boy  had  fainted  in  his  pain;  his  deep 
unconsciousness  made  extrication  easier  and  Wil- 
liam tugged  again  at  the  lumber  until  he  had 
tugged  it  away.  One  of  the  wounded  man's  legs 
was  a  wrenched  and  bloody  mass;  William  shud- 
dered at  the  sight,  looked  down  stupidly  at  the 
dead  white  face  and  wondered  what  was  to  be 
done  —  then,  feeling  that  something  must  at  least 
be  tried,  put  his  arms  round  the  inert  body  and 
strove  to  lift  it  from  the  ground.  The  only  re- 
sults were  breathlessness  on  his  part  and  a  groan 
from  the  unconscious  German.  William  dropped 
him  instantly  on  hearing  the  groan,  trembling  at 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    131 

the  idea  of  inflicting  yet  more  suffering,  torn  by 
the  thought  of  Griselda,  longing  to  go  and  yet 
ashamed  to  leave  the  boy-soldier  without  aid. 
He  might  have  hesitated  longer  but  for  a  fresh 
explosion  and  crash  of  falling  masonry;  it  was 
followed  by  a  long-drawn  screaming  intolerable 
to  hear  —  an  Aie,  Aie,  Aie  of  unspeakable  bodily 
pain.  With  a  sudden  sense  of  being  hunted,  be- 
ing driven  beyond  endurance,  William  turned  and 
shook  his  impotent  fists  in  the  direction  of  the  un- 
seen guns.  "  Can't  you  stop  one  moment?"  he 
screamed  idiotically,  hating  them  and  dancing 
with  rage.  "  Can't  you  stop,  you  devils  —  you 
devils?  Don't  you  see  I'm  only  trying  to  help 
him?"  If  he  had  ever  made  any  distinction  be- 
tween friend  and  enemy  artillery,  he  had  lost  all 
idea  of  it  now;  the  guns  for  the  moment  were  a 
private  persecution  of  himself,  and  he  was  con- 
scious only  of  being  foully  and  brutally  bullied  by 
monstrous  forces  with  whom  he  argued  and  at 
whom  he  cursed  and  spat. 

It  was  the  sight  of  what  had  once  been  a  horse 
that  brought  him  again  to  his  senses.  His  eye 
fell  on  it  as  he  danced  in  his  mad  ineptitude  at 
the  side  of  the  helpless  German;  it  had  been  one 
of  the  team  that  galloped  a  gun  down  the  by-road 
and  was  now  a  pulp  of  raw  flesh,  crushed  bone, 
and  most  hideously  scattered  entrail.  He  stared 


132    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

for  a  moment  at  the  horror,  incredulous  and 
frozen  —  then  sickened,  turned  and  ran  from  it 
in  a  passion  of  physical  loathing. 

For  a  minute  or  two  he  ran  he  knew  not  whither 

—  straight  ahead,  anywhere  to  be  away  from  the 
horror;  then,  as  his  shuddering  sickness  passed, 
there  rushed  back  the  thought  of  Griselda,  and  he 
reproached  himself  that  he  had  halted  even  for  a 
moment  and  even  for  a  purpose  of  mercy;  all  his 
energies  both  of  mind  and  body  were  turned  to  the 
finding  of  his  wife.     They  must  die,  he  was  sure 
of   it;   he   prayed   only   that   they   die   together. 
The  way  he  had  taken  lay  outside  the  walled  gar- 
dens between  the  village   and  the  railway  line; 
and  as  he  ran  he  called  her  — "  Griselda,   Gri- 
selda !  " —  in  a  voice  that  he  hardly  caught  him- 
self,  so  persistent  was  the  uproar  of  the  guns. 
When  he  fled  from  the  neighborhood  of  the  dis- 
membered horse  he  had  left  behind  him  the  path 
leading  directly  to  the  main  street  of  the  village 

—  which  it  was  his  aim  to  reach  since  there  he 
had  last  seen  Griselda.     Seeking  another  way  to 
it,  he  halted  when  he  came  to  a  door  in  the  wall, 
wrestled  with  the  latch  and  flung  himself  angrily 
against  it ;  it  resisted,  locked,  and  he  ran  on  again, 
still  panting  out  his  wife's  dear  name.     Twenty 
yards  farther  on  he  came  to  another  door  in  the 
wall  and  this  time  it  opened  to  his  hand. 

In  the  garden  beyond  was  no  sign  of  the  chaos 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     133 

that  had  overwhelmed  his  world  since  the  morn- 
ing. An  orderly  border  of  orderly  flowers,  es- 
paliered  walls  and  a  tree  or  two  ruddy  with  ap- 
ples; and  on  a  shaven  plot  of  the  greenest  grass 
an  empty  basket  chair  with  beside  it  a  white  cat 
reposing  with  her  paws  tucked  under  her  chin. 
The  white  cat  may  have  been  deaf,  or  she  may 
have  been  merely  intrepid;  whatever  the  cause 
her  nerves  were  unaffected  by  the  fury  of  conflict 
and  she  dozed  serenely  under  shell-fire,  the  em- 
bodiment of  comfortable  dignity.  She  opened  a 
warily  observant  eye  when  William  rushed  into 
her  garden;  but  being  a  well-fed  cat,  and  ac- 
customed to  deference,  she  took  no  further  pre- 
caution. She  stirred  not  even  when  he  hurried 
past  her  to  her  dwelling-house,  and  as  he  entered 
it  by  an  open  window  her  nose  descended  to  rest 
on  her  folded  paws. 

The  room  he  ran  into  through  the  open  window 
left  no  impression  on  the  mind  of  William  Tully; 
it  was  dark  after  the  sunlight  outside,  and  he  sup- 
posed it  must  have  been  empty.  He  went  rapidly 
along  the  short  passage  beyond  it,  making  for  the 
front  door;  he  met  no  one,  heard  no  one,  and  his 
fingers  were  touching  the  latch  when  he  saw, 
through  an  open  door  to  the  right  of  him,  the 
figure  of  a  kneeling  woman.  She  was  stout, 
dressed  in  black  and  gray-headed  and  she  knelt 
leaning  on  a  chair  in  the  middle  of  the  polished 


134    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

floor;  her  eyes  were  closed,  her  lips  moved,  and 
her  hands  were  clasped  under  her  chin.  The 
sound  of  William's  feet  did  not  reach  her  through 
the  tumult  of  fighting  without,  nor  did  he  stay  to 
disturb  her.  When  he  lived  in  the  world  and  not 
hell  it  would  have  seemed  to  him  strange  and  un- 
fitting that  he  should  intrude  on  an  old  woman's 
privacy  and  secret  prayer;  now  nothing  was 
strange,  nothing  unfitting  or  impossible.  .  .  . 
He  supposed  that  she  was  the  white  cat's  mis- 
tress, noted  without  emotion  that  her  cheeks  were 
wet  with  tears  and  thought  vaguely  that  her  face 
was  familiar,  that  he  had  seen  it  somewhere  be- 
fore. Afterwards  it  came  to  him  that  he  had 
seen  it  when  the  hostages  died  in  the  morning, 
that  it  was  she  who  had  prayed  in  the  road  with 
folded  hands  and  pressed  her  crucifix  to  the 
mayor's  long  gray  mustache.  He  wondered, 
then,  what  became  of  her  and  her  well-fed  indif- 
ferent cat. 

That  was  afterwards,  many  weeks  afterwards; 
for  the  time  being  he  had  no  interest  to  give  her, 
his  thoughts  were  only  of  Griselda  and  the  means 
by  which  she  might  be  found.  His  plan,  so  far 
as  it  could  be  called  a  plan,  was  to  run  from 
house  to  house  in  the  village  street  until  he  came 
to  the  place  where  she  was  captive;  but  when  he 
stepped  into  the  road  it  was  to  find  it  impossible 
of  passage  by  reason  of  the  men  and  vehicles  that 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     135 

choked  the  stretch  in  front  of  him.     Almost  op- 
posite the   door  he  came  through,   a  motor-am- 
bulance, going  eastward  with  its  load,  had  collided 
with  an  ammunition  wagon  going  west,  thus  bring- 
ing to  a  standstill  more  ammunition  wagons  and 
a  battery  of  horse-artillery,   its   foremost   ranks 
thrown  back  in  confusion  by  a  threatening  skid  of 
the  ambulance.     There  was  much  whistling,  and 
shouting  of  orders  in  the  attempt  to  reform  and 
clear  the  road;  horses  reared  from  the  suddenness 
with  which  they  were  pulled  up  and  men  ran  to 
their  heads  to  steady  them.     While  the  locked 
wheels  were  wrestled  with,   a  bandaged  bloody 
face  peered  round  the  tail  of  the  ambulance;  the 
press  swayed  to  and  fro,  filling  the  road  from 
side  to  side,  and  William,  unable  to  move,  flat- 
tened back  against  the  door  from  which  he  had 
issued,  out  of  reach  of  the  wicked  heels  of  a  res- 
tive  horse.     For  the   first  moment  he   expected 
some  one  to  seize  and  a?rrest  him,  and  had  he  not 
unthinkingly  closed  the  door  behind  him  he  would 
have  beat  a  hasty  retreat;  but  there  was  bloodier 
and  busier  work  on  hand  than  the  corraling  of 
stray  civilians,  and  no  man  touched  or  questioned 
him  as  he  pressed  himself  against  the  neat  green- 
painted  door.     Struggling  with  their  own  most 
urgent  concerns,  not  a  soldier  so  much  as  noticed 
him;  and  it  was  borne  in  on  William  that  if  the 
wicked  heels  had  caught  him  and  kicked  his  life 


136    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

out,  not  a  man  would  have  noticed  that  either. 
Farther  down  the  street  was  a  cloud  of  slowly 
rising  black  smoke  —  and  suddenly  through  it  a 
banner  of  flame  leaped  up  and  waved  trium- 
phantly; one  of  the  tidy  two-storied  houses  had 
been  set  afire  by  a  shell.  As  William  watched 
the  resplendent  flare  the  crowd  round  the  two 
vehicles  composed  itself  into  something  like  order, 
and  the  ambulance  —  its  driver,  by  the  excited 
movements  of  his  mouth,  still  shouting  out  angry 
explanations  —  was  backed  from  the  path  of  the 
advancing  troops  and  thrust  crippled  against  the 
wall.  The  guns  on  one  side  of  the  road,  the 
wagons  on  the  other  stirred  forward  —  at  first 
slowly,  then,  as  the  line  straightened  itself  out, 
with  a  rattle  of  increasing  speed.  As  they  passed 
the  house  afire  the  smoke  rolled  down  on  them 
and  hid  them  from  William's  sight. 


CHAPTER  X 

WITH  the  conviction  that  no  one  was 
heeding  his  comings  and  goings,  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  assurance  came  back  to 
William  Tully,  and  as  the  way  cleared  before  him 
he  set  off  down  the  street  without  any  attempt  at 
concealment.  By  house  to  house  visitation  he 
sought  for  his  wife  through  the  village;  it  was 
there  she  had  been  taken  from  him,  and  he  thrust 
back  the  deadly  suspicion  that  she  need  not  have 
remained  in  the  place  where  she  had  disappeared 
from  his  sight. 

There  was  not  a  closed  door  in  the  length  of 
the  street,  and  nowhere  was  his  entrance  barred; 
the  call  to  arms  had  temporarily  cleared  the 
houses  of  the  invaders  quartered  in  them,  and  he 
ran  from  one  doorway  to  another  unhindered, 
calling  on  Griselda  as  he  entered,  looking  into 
every  room,  and  then  out  to  repeat  the  process. 
The  two  first  houses  were  empty  from  garret  to 
cellar,  but  with  signs  of  having  been  left,  recently 
and  hurriedly,  by  the  soldiers  billeted  therein; 

137 


138    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

odds  and  ends  of  military  kit  were  scattered 
about,  chairs  overturned  and  left  lying;  and  in 
one  room,  a  kitchen,  on  a  half-extinguished  fire, 
a  blackened  frizzle  of  meat  in  a  frying-pan  filled 
the  air  with  a  smell  of  burning.  The  third  house 
he  thought  likewise  empty;  downstairs  there  was 
the  same  litter  —  overthrown  furniture  and  food 
half  eaten  on  the  table;  but  opening  the  door  of 
an  upper  room  he  came  on  a  woman  with  three 
children. 

The  woman  started  to  her  feet  as  the  door 
opened,  a  child  hugged  to  her  bosom  and  other 
two  clinging  to  her  skirt;  and  William  had  a  pass- 
ing impression  of  a  plump,  pallid  face  with  lips 
apart  and  wide,  wet  eyes,  half-imploring  and  half- 
defiant.  One  of  the  children  was  crying  —  its 
mouth  was  rounded  in  a  roar  —  but  you  heard 
nothing  of  its  vigorous  plaint  for  the  louder  din 
without.  William  made  a  gesture  that  he  meant 
to  be  reassuring,  shut  the  door  and  ran  back  into 
the  street. 

He  went  in  and  out  desperately,  like  a  creature 
hunted  or  hunting;  and,  having  drawn  blank  in 
house  after  house,  the  deadly  thought  refused  to 
be  thrust  and  kept  under.  If  they  had  taken  her 
away,  she  might  be  ...  anywhere !  East  or 
west,  gone  in  any  direction,  and  leaving  no  clew 
for  her  following.  Anywhere  in  a  blind  incom- 
prehensible world,  where  men  killed  men  and 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     139 

might  was  right,  and  life,  as  he  knew  it  from  his 
childhood  up,  had  ended  in  an  orgy  of  devilry  I 
He  went  on  running  from  house  to  house,  while 
shells  screamed  and  burst  and  guns  clattered  by, 
and  no  man  gave  heed  to  his  running  or  the  tumult 
and  torture  of  his  fears.  Upstairs  and  down  and 
out  again  —  upstairs  and  down  and  out. 

He  was  nearing  the  end  of  the  street  when  he 
found  her  at  last;  in  the  upper  back  room  of  a 
little  white  house  some  yards  beyond  the  building 
in  flames,  and  not  far  from  the  spot  where  they 
had  seen  the  hostages  die.  She  was  alone  and 
did  not  move  when  he  flung  the  door  open; 
crouched  in  a  corner  with  her  head  on  her  knees, 
she  neither  saw  nor  heard  him.  For  an  instant 
it  seemed  to  him  that  his  strength  would  fail  him 
for  gladness,  and  he  staggered  and  held  to  the 
door;  as  the  giddiness  passed  he  ran  to  her,  bab- 
bling inaudible  relief,  and  pulled  the  bands  from 
her  face.  He  had  an  instant's  glimpse  of  it, 
white  and  tear-marked,  with  swollen  lips  and  red 
eyes;  then,  as  his  arms  went  round  her  and  he  had 
her  up  from  the  floor,  it  went  down  on  his  shoul- 
der and  was  hidden.  He  felt  her  clinging  to  him, 
trembling  against  him,  sobbing  against  him  while 
he  held  her  —  and  all  his  soul  was  a  passion  of 
endearment  and  thankfulness.  ...  So  for  a  min- 
ute or  two  —  perhaps  longer  —  they  clung  to 
each  other,  reunited:  until  William,  his  sense  of 


140    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

their  peril  returning,  sought  to  urge  his  wife  to 
the  door. 

She  came  with  him  for  a  step  or  two,  her  head 
still  on  his  shoulder;  then,  suddenly,  she  shivered 
and  wrestled  in  his  arms,  thrust  him  from  her, 
rushed  back  to  the  end  of  the  room  and  leaned 
against  it,  shaking  with  misery.  Her  arm  was 
raised  over  her  hidden  face  and  pressed  against 
the  wall;  and  he  saw  what  he  had  not  seen  be- 
fore, that  the  sleeve  was  torn  and  the  flesh  near 
the  wrist  bruised  and  reddened.  He  saw  also  — 
his  eyes  being  opened  —  that  it  was  not  only  her 
hair  that  was  tumbled;  all  her  dress  was  disor- 
dered and  awry.  There  was  another  tear  under 
the  armpit  where  the  sleeve  had  given  way  and 
the  white  of  her  underlinen  showed  through  the 
gap.  .  .  .  His  heart  cried  out  to  him  that  she 
had  struggled  merely  as  a  captive,  had  been  re- 
strained by  brute  force  from  escaping  —  but  his 
own  eyes  had  seen  that  she  turned  from  him  as 
if  there  was  a  barrier  between  them,  as  if  there 
was  something  to  hide  that  yet  she  wished  him  to 
know.  .  .  .  For  a  moment  he  fought  with  the 
certainty,  and  then  it  came  down  on  him  like  a 
storm:  for  once  in  his  life  his  imagination  was 
vivid,  and  he  saw  with  the  eyes  of  his  mind  as 
clearly  as  with  the  eyes  of  his  body.  All  the  de- 
tails, the  animal  details,  her  cries  and  her  pitiful 
wrestlings;  and  the  phrase  "licentious  soldiery'* 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    141 

personified  in  the  face  of  the  man  who  had  been 
Griselda's  jailer.  Round  and  roughly  good- 
humored  in  repose  with  black  eyebrows  and  a 
blue-black  chin.  .  .  .  He  caught  her  by  the  hands 
and  said  something  to  her  —  jerked  out  words 
that  stammered  and  questioned  —  and  she  sobbed 
and  turned  her  face  from  him  again.  .  .  .  After 
that  he  could  not  remember  what  he  felt  or  how 
long  he  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  oblivious 
of  danger  and  staring  at  her  heaving  shoulders 
and  the  tumbled  hair  that  covered  them;  but  it 
seemed  to  him  that  he  talked  and  moved  his  hands 
and  hated  —  and  did  not  know  what  to  do. 

In  the  end  there  must  have  come  to  him  some 
measure  of  helpless  acquiescence,  or  perhaps  he 
was  quieted  and  taken  out  of  himself  by  the  need 
of  giving  help  to  Griselda.  After  how  long  he 
knew  not  he  found  himself  once  more  with  his 
arms  around  her;  she  let  him  take  her  hand,  he 
kissed  it  and  stroked  her  poor  hair.  This  time 
she  came  with  him  when  he  led  her  to  the  door, 
and  they  went  down  the  stairway  together.  Near 
the  street  door  she  hesitated  and  halted,  and  he 
saw  she  had  something  to  say. 

"  Where  are  we  going?"  she  asked,  with  her 
lips  to  his  ear.  "  Can  we  get  away?  " 

He  told  her  he  thought  so,  that  now  was  the 
time  when  they  might  slip  away  unnoticed  —  try- 
ing to  encourage  her  by  the  assumption  of  a 


142    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

greater  confidence  than  he  felt.  Fortune  fa- 
vored them,  however,  and  the  assumption  of  con- 
fidence was  justified;  though  the  bombardment 
had  slackened  as  suddenly  as  it  had  begun,  the 
remnant  of  German  soldiery  left  in  the  place  was 
still  too  much  occupied  with  its  own  concerns  to 
interfere  with  a  couple  of  civilians  seeking  safety 
in  the  rear  of  the  fire-zone,  and  no  one  paid  any 
heed  to  them  as  they  made  their  way  along  the 
street.  They  turned  inevitably  westward  — 
away  from  the  guns  —  down  the  road  they  had 
come  that  morning:  two  hunted,  disheveled  little 
figures,  keeping  well  to  the  wall  and  glancing  over 
their  shoulders.  The  crush  of  wagons,  of  guns 
and  men,  had  moved  forward  and  out  of  the  vil- 
lage, which,  for  the  moment,  seemed  clear  of  all 
but  noncombatants  —  save  for  the  ubiquitous 
cyclist  who  dashed  backwards  and  forwards  in 
his  dust.  An  ambulance  was  discharging  its  load 
at  a  building  whence  waved  the  Red  Cross,  and 
near  at  hand,  but  out  of  sight,  a  battery  was 
thudding  regularly;  but  of  the  few  uniformed 
figures  in  the  street  itself  there  was  none  whose 
business  it  was  to  interest  himself  in  their  move- 
ments. They  hurried  on,  clinging  to  each  other 
and  hugging  the  wall  —  except  when  a  heap  of 
fallen  brickwork,  a  derelict  vehicle  or  other  ob- 
stacle forced  them  out  into  the  road. 

They  were  almost  at  the  entry  of  the  village 


WILLIAM  —  AN  ENGLISHMAN     143 

when  they  came  upon  such  an  obstacle :  the  upper 
part  of  one  of  the  endmost  houses  had  evidently 
been  -struck  by  a  shell,  for  a  large  slice  of  roof 
and  outside  wall  had  crumbled  to  the  pathway 
below.  It  had  crumbled  but  recently,  since  the 
dust  was  still  clouding  thickly  above  the  ruin  and 
veiling  the  roadway  beyond  it;  hence,  as  they 
skirted  its  borders,  it  was  not  until  he  was  actually 
upon  them  that  they  were  aware  of  a  motor-cy- 
clist speeding  furiously  out  of  the  dusk.  The  roar 
of  the  battery  a  few  yards  away  ha^d  drowned  the 
whirr  of  his  machine,  and  Griselda  was  almost 
under  it  before  she  had  warning  of  its  coming. 
The  stooping  rider  yelled  and  swerved,  but  not 
enough  to  avoid  her;  she  went  down,  flung  side- 
ways, while  the  cyclist  almost  ran  on  to  the  heap 
of  rubble  on  his  right  —  then,  recovering  his  bal- 
ance, dashed  forward  and  was  lost  in  the  dusk. 
Save  for  that  momentary  swerve  and  stagger,  he 
had  passed  like  a  bolt  on  his  errand,  leaving  Gri- 
selda crumpled  in  the  road  at  William's  feet. 
To  his  mind,  no  doubt,  a  mishap  most  luckily 
avoided. 

Griselda  lay  without  moving,  her  face  to  the 
dust,  and  for  one  tortured  moment  William 
thought  the  life  beaten  out  of  her;  but  when  he 
raised  her,  her  lips  moved,  as  if  in  a  moan,  and 
as  he  dragged  her  for  safety  to  the  side  of  the 
road  she  turned  her  head  on  his  arm.  He  laid 


144    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

her  down  while  he  ran  for  water  from  the  river; 
panted  to  its  brim,  soaked  his  handkerchief  for 
lack  of  a  cup,  brought  it  back  and  pressed  it  to 
her  forehead.  Her  eyes,  when  she  opened  them, 
were  glazed  with  pain  and  her  lips  drawn  tightly 
to  her  teeth;  when  he  wanted  to  raise  her  to  a 
sitting  position  she  caught  his  hand,  thrust  it  from 
her  and  lay  with  her  white  face  working.  So  she 
lay,  for  minutes  that  seemed  hours,  with  her  hus- 
band kneeling  beside  her.  .  .  .  Men  passed  them 
but  stayed  not;  and  once,  when  William  looked 
up,  a  car  was  speeding  by  with  helmeted  officers 
inside  it  —  too  intent  on  their  own  hasty  business 
of  death  to  have  so  much  as  a  glance  to  spare  for 
a  woman  in  agony  of  bodily  pain  and  a  man  in 
agony  of  mind. 

The  night  had  come  down  before  Griselda  was 
able  to  move.  With  its  fall  the  near-by  battery 
was  silenced  and  the  distant  thunder  less  fre- 
quent; so  that  William  was  able  to  hear  her  when 
she  spoke  and  asked  him  to  lift  her.  He  sobbed 
for  joy  as  he  lifted  her,  gently  and  trembling  lest 
he  hurt  her;  she  sat,  leaning  on  his  arm,  breathing 
painfully  and  telling  him  in  jerks  that  it  was  her 
side  that  pained  her  most  —  her  left  side  and  her 
left  arm,  but  most  of  all  her  side.  At  first  she 
seemed  dazed  and  conscious  only  of  her  suffer- 
ings—  whimpered  about  them  pitifully  with  in- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     145 

tervals  of  silence  —  but  after  ten  minutes  or  so 
she  caught  his  sleeve  and  tugged  it. 

"  Let's  get  away.     Help  me  up !  " 

He  suggested  that  she  should  rest  a  little 
longer,  but  she  urged  him  with  trembling,  "  Let's 
get  away !  "  and  he  had  perforce  to  raise  her.  In 
spite  of  the  fever  for  flight  that  had  taken  pos- 
session of  her  she  cried  out  as  he  helped  her  to 
her  feet  and  stood  swaying  with  her  eyes  shut  and 
her  teeth  bitten  hard  together.  He  would  have 
lain  her  down  again,  but  she  signed  a  "  No,  no !  " 
at  the  attempt  and  gripped  at  his  shoulder  to 
steady  herself;  then,  after  a  moment,  guided  his 
arm  round  her  body,  so  that  he  could  hold  her 
without  giving  unnecessary  pain. 

"  You  mustn't  press  my  side  —  I  can't  bear  it. 
But  if  you  put  your  hand  on  my  shoulder " 

They  moved  away  from  the  village  at  a  snail's 
pace,  Griselda  leaning  heavily  on  her  husband. 
Behind  them  at  first  was  the  red  light  from  burn- 
ing houses ;  but  as  they  crawled  onwards  the  dark- 
ness of  the  valley  closed  in  on  them  until,  in  the 
somber  shadow  of  the  cliff,  William  could  only 
distinguish  his  wife's  face  as  a  whitish  patch  upon 
his  shoulder.  When  she  groaned,  as  she  did 
from  time  to  time,  he  halted  to  give  her  relief, 
but  she  would  never  allow  him  to  stand  for  more 
than  a  minute  or  two ;  after  a  few  painful  breaths 


146    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

there  would  come  the  tug  of  her  fingers  at  his  coat 
that  was  the  sign  to  move  forward  again.  Once 
or  twice  she  whispered  to  know  if  any  one  were 
coming  after  them,  and  he  could  feel  her  whole 
body  a-quiver  with  fear  at  the  thought. 

Barred  in  by  cliff  to  right  and  river  to  left,  they 
kept  perforce  to  the  road  —  or,  rather,  to  the 
turf  that  bordered  it.  The  traffic  on  the  road  it- 
self had  not  ceased  with  the  falling  of  night;  cars 
were  coming  up  and  guns  were  coming  up  and 
the  valley  was  alive  with  their  rumble  —  and  at 
every  passing  Griselda  shrank  and  her  fingers 
shivered  in  their  grip  upon  William's  sleeve. 

"  Can't  we  get  away  from  them?"  she  whis- 
pered at  last.  "  Right  away  and  hide  —  can't 
we  turn  off  the  road?" 

He  said  helplessly  that  he  did  not  know  where, 
until  they  reached  the  entrance  to  their  valley. 
"  It's  all  cliff  —  and  the  river  on  the  other 
side." 

She  had  known  it  without  asking;  there  was 
nothing  for  it  but  to  drag  herself  along.  To 
both  the  distance  was  never-ending;  Griselda's 
terror  of  recapture  communicated  itself  to  her 
husband,  and  he  shivered  even  as  she  did  at  the 
rattle  of  a  passing  car.  Instinctively  they  kept 
to  the  shadow,  stumbling  in  its  blackness  over  the 
uneven  ground  below  the  cliff.  Once,  when  a 
couple  of  patrolling  horsemen  halted  near  them 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     147 

in  the  roadway,  they  crouched  and  held  their 
breath  during  an  eternity  of  dreadful  seconds 
while  they  prayed  that  they  had  not  been  noticed. 
It  seemed  to  William  that  his  heart  stopped  beat- 
ing when  one  of  the  horsemen  walked  his  beast 
a  yard  or  two  nearer  and  flashed  a  light  into  their 
faces;  but  the  man,  having  surveyed  them,  turned 
away  indifferently  and  followed  his  comrade  down 
the  road.  That  was  just  before  they  came  to 
the  gap  in  the  heights  that  led  into  the  valley  of 
silence. 

As  they  entered  it  for  the  last  time,  in  both 
their  minds  was  the  thought  that  they  might  find 
it  barred  to  them;  and  the  beating  of  their  hearts 
was  loud  in  their  ears  as  they  crept  into  its 
friendly  shadow. 

'  The  woods,"  Griselda  whispered. 

They  turned  into  the  woods  and  took  cover; 
and,  with  a  yard  or  two,  the  blackness  under  the 
trees  had  closed  in  on  them,  blotting  out  all  things 
from  sight.  They  halted  because  they  could  see 
to  walk  no  further. 

"  Let  me  down,"  Griselda  said  —  and  her  hus- 
band knew  by  the  gasp  in  her  voice  that  she  was 
at  the  end  of  her  powers  of  endurance.  He  ex- 
plored with  an  outstretched  hand  for  a  tree  trunk 
and  lowered  her  gently  to  the  ground  with  her 
back  supported  against  it;  she  panted  relief  as  he 
sat  down  beside  her  and  groped  for  her  fingers  in 


148    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

the  darkness.  ...  So  they  sat  holding  to  each 
other  and  enveloped  in  thickest  night. 

The  guns  had  died  down  altogether,  and  the 
rumble  from  the  road,  though  almost  continuous, 
was  dulled  —  so  that  William  could  hear  his 
wife's  uneven  breathing  and  the  stealthy  whisper 
of  the  trees.  He  sat  holding  Griselda's  hand  and 
staring  into  the  blackness,  a  man  dazed  and  con- 
founded ;  who  yesterday  was  happy  lover  and  self- 
respecting  citizen  and  to-day  had  suffered  stripes, 
been  slave  and  fugitive,  learned  the  evil  wrought 
on  his  wife. 

Thinking  on  it  afterwards,  he  wondered  that  he 
had  closed  an  eye ;  yet  he  had  sat  in  the  darkness 
but  a  very  few  minutes  when,  swiftly  and  without 
warning,  he  fell  into  a  heavy  sleep. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HE  woke  with  the  blaze  of  the  eastern  sun 
in  his  eyes,  and  on  the  first  sensation  of 
bewilderment  at  finding  his  bed  was 
moss,  came  a  rush  of  remembrance  and  with  it 
self-reproach  —  he  had  slept  while  Griselda  suf- 
fered. He  knelt  and  bent  over  her  as  she  lay 
still  asleep,  huddled  on  her  right  side;  her  face 
was  flushed,  her  lips  were  cracked,  and  she  was 
breathing  in  heavy  little  snorts.  As  he  knelt  and 
gazed  the  thunder  of  yesterday  broke  out  in  the 
distance,  and  Griselda  stirred  and  woke  moan- 
ing. 

Her  first  cry  was  for  water,  and  in  the  insist- 
ence of  her  thirst  she  was  oblivious  of  every- 
thing but  her  burning  need  to  slake  it;  he  broke 
cover  and  ran  to  the  stream,  some  fifty  yards 
away,  soaked  his  handkerchief  and  made  a  tight 
cup  of  his  hands.  The  cup  was  a  failure,  and  the 
little  that  was  left  in  it  when  he  reached  Griselda 
was  spilled  when  she  tried  to  drink;  but  the  drip- 
ping handkerchief  she  sucked  at  eagerly  and  gave 

MP 


150    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

back  for  another  soaking.  He  was  about  to 
break  cover  to  wet  it  again  when  he  caught  sight 
first  of  one,  then  of  half-a-dozen  horsemen  enter- 
ing the  valley  by  the  gap;  and  shrank  back,  cower- 
ing, into  the  friendly  shelter  of  the  tree-trunks  - 
sick  with  uncertainty  as  to  whether  or  no  they 
had  seen  him.  He  judged  not  when  he  saw  them 
dismount  and  picket  their  horses;  and  having 
watched  them  long  enough  to  see  that  they  were 
making  preparations  for  a  meal,  he  turned  and 
crept  back  to  Griselda. 

The  terror  of  yesterday  came  down  on  her 
when  she  heard  his  whispered  news.  A  moment 
before  she  had  seemed  incapable  of  movement, 
Iain  crumpled  on  her  side  and  repulsed,  with  a 
feverish  pettishness,  his  efforts  to  stir  and  raise 
her;  now  she  clung  to  him  and  struggled  to  her 
feet,  even  pain  forgotten  in  the  passion  for  in- 
stant flight.  So,  holding  together,  they  fled 
again:  fled  crawling,  they  knew  not  whither. 
Two  instincts  guided  them  and  directed  their 
stumbling  footsteps:  the  instinct  to  leave  far  be- 
hind them  the  threat  of  the  guns  and  the  instinct 
to  keep  out  of  sight.  Thus  they  held  to  the 
woods  above  the  valley  of  silence,  avoiding  all 
paths  that  led  out  into  the  open;  their  direction, 
roughly,  was  southward  —  though  they  did  not 
know  it  —  and  they  dragged  a  mile,  or  even  less, 
where  a  man  in  health  might  make  five. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     151 

When  they  had  gone  some  few  hundred  yards 
they  struck  the  trickle  of  a  hill-side  rivulet  on  its 
way  to  join  the  stream  in  the  valley.  At  the 
sound  of  its  babble  Griselda  cried  out  and  tried  to 
hasten,  and,  when  they  came  to  it,  slipped  down 
till  she  could  thrust  her  face  into  the  water  and 
drink  like  the  sun-parched  Israelites  who  marched 
with  Gideon.  They  drank,  they  dabbled  in  it, 
bathed  hands  and  feet,  and  Griselda  washed  her 
broken  side  —  touching  it  gingerly  and  not  daring 
to  pull  away  the  linen  that  the  blood  had  caked  to 
the  flesh.  After  that  William  helped  her  to  her 
feet  and  they  dragged  on  farther. 

If  they  found  water  in  abundance,  they  found 
but  little  to  eat;  and  though  Griselda  made  no 
complaint  of  hunger,  as  the  hours  went  by  it 
gnawed  at  her  husband's  vitals.  At  first  their 
path  lay  chiefly  through  beechwoods  bare  of  un- 
dergrowth, and  they  had  been  an  hour  or  two  on 
their  way  before  they  came  to  blackberry  bushes. 
Upon  these  William  fell,  tearing  his  hands  on  the 
thorns  by  his  eager  stripping  of  the  bushes;  Gri- 
selda would  hardly  touch  them,  but  he  shoveled 
them  into  his  mouth  and  ate  long  and  voraciously. 
He  had  toiled  much  the  day  before  and  eaten  lit- 
tle —  a  scanty  breakfast  and  the  scraps  of  bread 
and  meat  allotted  by  his  captors  at  midday  — 
and,  shovel  as  he  might,  the  berries  were  a  poor 
substitute  for  the  meal  he  craved  and  dreamed  of. 


152    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

That  was  a  meal  which  floated  before  the  eye  of 
his  mind  as  phantom  ham  and  eggs,  phantom  cuts 
from  the  joint,  thick  slabs  of  well-buttered  bread; 
something  solid  that  a  man  could  set  his  teeth  in 
and  gnaw  till  his  stomach  was  satisfied.  He  was 
ashamed  of  the  way  in  which  food  and  the  long- 
ing for  food  possessed  him  — so  that  there  were 
moments  when  the  phantom  joint  was  more  pres- 
ent to  his  mind  than  Griselda  or  the  fear  of  death 
itself. 

To  the  phase  of  violent  and  savage  hunger  suc- 
ceeded, with  hours,  a  giddy  dreaminess,  the  result 
of  growing  exhaustion.  As  the  day  wore  on  and 
exhaustion  increased,  his  mind,  like  his  body,  re- 
fused to  work  connectedly ;  his  feet  often  stumbled 
and  he  was  incapable  of  consecutive  thought. 
Once  he  found  himself  sitting  with  Griselda  un- 
der a  beechtree,  holding  her  fingers  and  consider- 
ing how  they  had  come  there  and  why  they  had 
got  to  go  on;  and  wandering  off  into  vague  recol- 
lection of  the  story  of  a  knightly  lover  who  had 
carried  his  mistress  long  miles  through  a  forest 
in  his  arms.  The  details  of  the  story  escaped  his 
memory  and  he  sought  for  them  with  pettish  in- 
sistence; with  perhaps  at  the  back  of  his  mind 
some  idea,  born  of  brain-fag,  that,  did  he  but 
remember  them,  he  could  do  the  same  service  for 
Griselda. 

He  had  soon  lost  all  sense  of  direction;  but  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     153 

instinct  to  hide  never  left  him,  and  once  or  twice, 
when  the  wood  seemed  to  be  opening  out,  he  drew 
his  wife  back  to  the  solitude  under  the  trees. 
With  the  passing  of  the  hours  their  rests  by  the 
way  grew  longer;  Griselda  was  able  to  keep  her 
feet  for  a  few  minutes  only  before  she  muttered 
or  signed  a  request  for  another  halt.  Whereat 
William  would  lower  her  to  the  ground  where  she 
propped  herself  against  a  tree-trunk  or  lay  hud- 
dled and  silent  with  closed  eyes. 

At  one  such  halt  he  fell  suddenly  and  help- 
lessly asleep;  perhaps  Griselda  did  the  same,  for 
though  the  sun  was  high  when  he  sat  him  down 
the  woods  were  heavy  with  blue  dusk  when  she 
roused  him  by  a  tugging  at  his  sleeve.  She  was 
craving  again  for  water;  her  lips  were  cracked  for 
the  want  of  it.  They  rose  and  went  blindly  in 
search  —  halting  every  few  minutes  as  much  to 
strain  their  ears  for  the  longed-for  ripple  as  to 
give  Griselda  strength.  More  than  once  she  was 
at  the  falling  point ;  so  much  so  that  he  suggested 
she  should  lie  down  while  he  hunted  further  for  a 
stream.  She  refused,  trembling  at  the  idea  of 
being  left  alone  —  unreasonably,  but  perhaps 
wisely,  since  William,  astray  in  the  darkening 
woods,  might  well  have  had  difficulty  in  finding 
his  way  to  her  again. 

The  dusk  was  more  than  dusk  before  they 
found  what  they  sought;  it  was  actual  darkness 


154    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

of  night  descending  to  cover  the  earth.  They  had 
halted  perforce  more  than  once  when  Griselda 
could  go  no  farther ;  but  always  her  thirst  burned 
her,  and  she  rose  and  struggled  forward  again. 
She  was  past  speaking  when  they  came  on  a  clear- 
ing, and  then  on  a  stream  that  ran  through  it,  of 
which  they  were  only  aware  when  they  trod  into 
the  marshy  ground  at  its  brim.  She  drank 
heavily,  lay  inert  and  seemed  to  sleep. 

Perhaps  because  he  had  slept  for  so  long  in  the 
afternoon  her  husband  was  more  wakeful;  for 
hours  he  sat  with  his  eyes  wide  and  his  chin 
propped  on  his  hands.  After  nightfall  had  come 
silence  from  the  guns  and  at  first  the  only  sounds 
were  forest  sounds  —  night-bird  talk  and  the  lap- 
ping of  unseen  water  at  his  feet.  Later  Griselda 
was  restless  and  became  conversational,  talking 
rapidly  and  brokenly  in  a  delirium  of  pain  and 
fever  and  paying  no  heed  to  his  efforts  to  answer 
and  calm  her.  Her  mind,  uncontrolled,  had  re- 
turned to  a  familiar  channel;  she  was  back  in  the 
world  that  had  crumbled  but  yesterday,  waging 
war  as  she  understood  it  till  she  saw  the  hostages 
die.  The  Great  Civil  War  that  you  fought  with 
martyrdoms,  with  protests  at  meetings  and  ham- 
mers on  plate-glass  windows  —  he  could  hear  she 
was  back  in  the  thick  of  it  incoherently  addressing 
an  audience.  Snatches  of  old-time  denunciation 
—  Asquith,  McKenna,  the  sins  of  the  Labor 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Party  —  and,  emerging  from  a  torrent  of  incom- 
prehensibility, the  names  of  the  Leaders  of  the 
Movement.  He  listened,  crouched  in  the  dark- 
ness, a  starving  fugitive  —  who  had  seen  men 
dismembered  and  done  to  death  in  a  war  that 
was  not  civil;  and  suddenly,  crouched  and  starv- 
ing in  the  darkness,  he  began  to  laugh  out  loud. 
He  remembered  —  quite  plainly  he  remembered 
—  a  letter  written  to  the  daily  Press  to  point  out 
with  indignation  that  one  of  the  Leaders  of  the 
Movement  had  been  hurt  in  the  ankle  in  the  course 
of  the  Great  Civil  War.  .  .  .  He  only  laughed 
briefly;  the  echo  of  his  own  voice  frightened  himr 
and  its  cackle  died  swiftly  away.  In  the  grave 
black  silence  it  sounded  like  a  blasphemy,  and  he 
told  himself  excusingly  that  he  had  not  been  able 
to  help  it. 

With  rest  and  cessation  of  movement  his  brain 
worked  more  easily;  and  with  the  passing  of  his 
first  savage  hunger  he  was  no  longer  preoccupied 
with  the  needs  of  his  empty  stomach.  He  con- 
sidered the  situation,  dispassionately  and  curi- 
ously detached  from  it;  deciding,  with  an  odd 
lack  of  emotion,  that  to-morrow  could  not  be  as 
to-day.  Whatever  the  need,  Griselda  could  walk 
no  farther;  he,  for  his  part,  was  incapable  of 
dragging  her;  when  the  light  came  they  must 
just  sit  and  wait.  His  mind  refused  to  trouble 
itself  with  details  of  what  would  happen  if 


156    WILLIAM  —  AN  ENGLISHMAN 

sat  and  waited  too  long.  Looking  back  at  that 
night  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  not  able  to  feel 
very  much;  his  capacity  for  emotion  was  ex- 
hausted, even  as  his  body.  When  Griselda 
stirred  or  groaned  he  tried  to  shift  her  more  com- 
fortably, when  she  gasped  for  water  he  helped 
her  to  bend  down  and  drink;  but  the  power  of 
imaginative  terror  had  left  him  for  the  time  be- 
ing, and  he  no  longer  trembled  and  sickened  at 
her  suffering  as  he  had  done  when  she  was  first 
struck  down. 

He  fell  into  a  doze  in  the  last  hours  of  night, 
and  when  his  eyes  opened  the  sky  was  a  pearly 
gray.  He  could  see  a  wide  stretch  of  it  over  the 
tree-tops;  for  at  the  spot  to  which  they  had  wan- 
dered in  the  uncertainty  of  darkness  the  grouping 
of  the  trees  was  less  close  than  it  had  been,  and 
there  was  a  suggestion  of  open  space  beyond  them. 
Griselda  lay  sleeping  or  unconscious,  with  her 
knotted  hair  straying  on  her  face;  he  smoothed 
it  away  as  he  knelt  beside  her,  took  her  hand  and 
called  her  by  name.  She  gave  no  answer,  and 
did  not  even  stir  when  he  kissed  her.  The  power 
of  imaginative  terror  had  returned  to  him,  and 
he  asked  himself  whether  she  were  dying?  .  .  . 
He  knelt  beside  her  for  a  few  minutes,  fondling 
her  hand  and  whispering,  imploring  her  to  speak 
—  and  then,  in  a  mingled  curse  and  appeal, 
stretched  his  arms  above  his  head  towards  heaven. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    157 

The  effort  and  emotion  exhausted  him;  he  col- 
lapsed both  bodily  and  mentally,  slipped  back  to 
the  grass  beside  his  wife  and  lay  with  his  face 
to  the  ground. 

What  roused  him  was  the  sound  of  a  man's 
voice  near  him;  not  words,  but  a  grunt  of  sur- 
prise unmistakably  human.  He  lifted  his  head 
and  saw  gazing  at  him  from  the  opposite  bank 
of  the  brook  the  man  who  had  uttered  the  grunt. 
A  man  carrying  a  pail,  very  filthy  and  many  days 
unshorn;  with  a  peaked  cap  flattened  on  the  back 
of  his  head,  a  dark  muddied  coat  and  loose 
trousers  that  had  once  been  red.  His  face,  for 
all  its  grime  and  its  black  sprouts  of  beard,  was 
reassuring  in  its  interest;  what  he  said  was  gib- 
berish to  William's  ears,  but  the  sound  of  it 
kindly  and  inquiring,  and,  when  William  shook 
his  head  and  pointed  to  his  wife,  he  set  down  his 
unfilled  pail  on  the  grass  and  waded  across  the 
shallow  stream.  He  looked  at  Griselda,  touched 
her  torpid  hand  gently  and  muttered  more 
friendly  gibberish;  finishing  by  a  pat  on  William's 
shoulder  before  he  waded  back  to  the  further 
bank,  filled  his  pail  to  the  brim  and  walked  away 
with  it.  He  turned  to  fling  back  a  last  gesture 
of  promise  before  he  vanished  among  the  trees, 
leaving  William  to  stare  after  him,  motionless 
and  dumb,  and  waiting  for  something,  he  knew 
not  what,  to  happen. 


158    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

What  happened,  after  an  interval,  was  the  re- 
appearance of  the  pail-bearer,  this  time  minus  his 
pail,  but  accompanied,  in  its  stead,  by  a  comrade. 
The  comrade  was  scarcely  less  filthy  and  similarly 
clad;  the  twain  emerged  from  between  the  trees, 
splashed  across  the  brook  and  exchanged  rapid 
gibberish  while  they  stood  and  looked  down  at 
Griselda.  Finally,  one  of  them,  addressing  him- 
self to  William,  pointed  to  somewhere  on  the  op- 
posite bank  and  nodded  with  intent  to  encourage ; 
whereupon  the  pair  of  them  lifted  Griselda,  made 
a  seat  of  their  arms  and  carried  her.  William 
followed  them,  lurching  from  weakness  as  he 
walked;  and  after  they  had  gone  about  a  couple 
of  hundred  yards  the  little  procession  came  out 
on  to  a  highway  where  a  hooded  car,  as  dirty  as 
its  guardians,  was  drawn  up  at  the  side  of  the 
road. 

On  the  floor  of  the  car  the  two  men  placed  Gri- 
selda, laying  her  down  gently  and  arranging,  with 
kind,  dirty  hands,  some  empty  sacks  as  a  make- 
shift couch  and  a  coat  as  a  makeshift  pillow. 
That  done,  they  signed  to  William  to  climb  in 
beside  his  wife,  and  one  of  them,  noticing  his 
feebleness,  lent  a  hand  to  him  over  the  tailboard, 
while  the  other  provided  him  with  a  hunk  of 
bread  and  a  large  tin  mug  of  red  wine.  His 
hunger  returned  with  the  taste  of  food,  and  he 
ate  with  a  ravenous  enjoyment,  gulping  down 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     159 

bread  and  wine  together;  before  he  had  finished 
gulping  the  car  had  started  and  was  rattling  over 
the  road,  he  knew  not  whither.  Woods  went  by 
them  and  open  spaces;  they  spanned  rivers, 
climbed  hills  and  descended  again  into  valleys. 
Sometimes  the  roads  were  rough,  and  at  the  jolt- 
ing of  the  car  Griselda  would  whimper  and  cry 
out  —  whereat  William  would  try  to  soothe  her 
with  assurance  that  the  worst  was  over,  they  were 
safe  and  would  soon  be  in  comfort.  He  did  not 
know  if  she  understood;  she  never  spoke  coher- 
ently and  hardly  ever  opened  her  eyes. 

For  the  first  wooded  mile  or  two  they  had  the 
road  to  themselves;  after  that  they  came  across 
other  traffic,  the  greater  part  of  it  heading  in  the 
same,  mostly  southerly,  direction.  It  was  varied 
traffic,  mechanical,  horse  and  foot:  guns  and  other 
cars,  some  signed  with  the  Geneva  cross;  now  a 
cavalry  patrol,  now  a  dusty  detachment  of  in- 
fantry; and,  intermingled  with  soldier  stragglers, 
little  groups  of  non-military  wayfarers,  in  carts 
and  tramping  afoot.  All  these  grew  more  fre- 
quent as  the  miles  went  under  them;  so  frequent 
as  to  hinder  their  progress,  and  finally,  when  they 
neared  their  destination,  bring  the  pace  of  the  car 
to  a  crawl. 

Their  destination  —  William  never  knew  its 
name  —  was  a  white-walled  village,  whereof  the 
one  long  street  was  crowded  with  the  traffic  of 


160    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

humanity;    the    same   kind    of   traffic   they   had 
passed  on  the  road,  but  thickened  and  impeded  by 
much  that  was  stationary  in  horses,  in  men  and  in 
vehicles.     The    car    jolted    half-way    along    the 
stone-paved  street  and  came  to  a  standstill  in  the 
company  of  three  or  four  others;  its  guardians 
descended  and  one  of  them  —  the  pail-bearer  — 
looked  over  the  tail  and  nodded  in  friendly-wise 
to  William  before  he  hurried  away.     There  was 
a  few  minutes'  wait,  during  which  nothing  per- 
sonal  happened  —  only   the   confused   sound   of 
voices,  the  confused  sound  of  movement  flowing 
incessantly,  movement  of  feet,  wheels  and  engines ; 
and  then  the  man  who  had  nodded  from  the  tail 
of  the  car  came  back,  others  with  him  —  dirty 
soldiers  like  unto  himself.     One  of  these  spoke 
to  William,  choosing  his  words  with  precision; 
and  when  he  shook  his  head  and  answered,  "  I  am 
English,"  there  was  talk  and  much  gesticulation. 
(It  struck  him  later  that  they  took  him  for  a 
Flemish-speaking  Belgian  and  perhaps  had  tried 
him  with  a  word  or  two  of  the  language.)      To 
the  accompaniment  of  talk  and  gesticulation  the 
tailboard  of  the  car  was  let  down  and  William, 
by  sign,  was  invited  to  set  foot  on  the  ground; 
whereafter  Griselda  was  also  lifted  out  and  laid 
by  the  roadside  on  a  truss  of  hay  which  some  one 
had  procured  for  the  purpose.     There  she  lay  for 
another  ten  minutes  or  so,  unaware  of  her  sur- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     161 

roundings  while  the  stream  of  humanity  flowed  by 
her  —  William,  hunched  beside  her  on  the  hay, 
wondering  dumbly  what  would  happen  to  them 
next.  He  knew  himself  among  friends  and  was 
no  longer  afraid;  but  all  initiative  had  left  him, 
all  power  of  action  and  idea.  He  had  a  dull 
hope  that  some  one  was  bringing  a  doctor  .  .  . 
meanwhile  he  could  do  nothing  but  wait  and 
obey,  and  when  his  good  Samaritan,  the  filthy  lit- 
tle soldier,  came  back  and  tapped  him  on  the 
shoulder,  he  rose,  passively  responsive. 

The  man  signed  to  him  that  they  should  lift 
Griselda  between  them;  he  obeyed  with  infinite 
difficulty,  panting  at  the  effort,  and  together  they 
carried  her  some  yards  down  the  street  to  a  cart 
that  stood  pulled  up  and  waiting  —  a  long,  most 
un-English-looking  country  cart  with  a  man 
perched  in  front  and  inside  two  women,  many 
bundles,  some  ducks  and  a  goat.  One  of  the 
women  was  shriveled  and  helpless  with  years; 
her  head  in  a  handkerchief  and  her  gnarled 
fingers  holding  to  her  knees,  she  sat  huddled 
against  the  protesting  goat,  a  lump  of  bent,  blear- 
eyed  old  age.  Her  companion  in  discomfort  — 
possibly  her  daughter  —  was  a  stout,  elderly  peas- 
ant woman,  the  counterpart  in  petticoats  of  the 
grizzled-haired  man  who  guided  a  solid  gray 
farmhorse.  She  made  room  for  Griselda,  talk- 
ing rapidly  the  while,  in  the  straw  at  the  bottom 


162    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

of  the  cart  —  thrusting  ducks  and  bundles  to  one 
side  of  the  vehicle  with  her  knotted  and  energetic 
hands;  perhaps  she  was  striving  to  explain  to 
William  that  it  was  impossible  to  accommodate 
another  passenger  and  that  he  must  follow  on 
foot.  She  may  have  been  friend  or  acquaintance 
of  the  dirty  Samaritan,  for,  as  the  cart  moved 
off  at  a  foot's  pace,  she  v/aved  to  him  in  friendly 
guise;  the  dirty  Samaritan,  for  his  part,  clapping 
William  on  the  back,  pointing  after  the  cart  and 
showing  his  teeth  in  a  final  grin  of  encourage- 
ment. In  the  days  that  followed  William  often 
regretted  that  he  had  not  known  how  to  thank 
him  for  the  bounty  of  his  overflowing  charity. 

He  walked  after  the  cart  as  it  lumbered 
through  the  village  and  out  of  it.  Nourishment 
and  the  sense  of  relief  had  given  back  some  of  his 
strength;  thus  he  was  able,  if  with  difficulty,  to 
keep  up  with  the  plodding  of  the  solid  gray  farm- 
horse  —  often  brought  to  a  standstill,  moreover, 
by  the  traffic  that  cumbered  the  road.  Some- 
times the  standstill  was  a  long  one,  accompanied 
by  confusion  and  shouting;  there  was  a  point 
where  a  stream  of  fugitives  flowing  southward 
met  reinforcements  hurrying  north  —  and  a  flock 
of  panic-stricken  sheep,  caught  between  the  two, 
charged  backwards  and  forwards,  to  the  yells  of 
their  sweating  drivers  and  the  anger  of  a  captain 
of  cavalry.  At  almost  every  cross-roads  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     163 

stream  was  swollen  by  a  fresh  rivulet  of  fugitives 
—  refugees  human  and  animal;  thus  at  such  junc- 
tions the  pace  was  slower  and  a  halt  frequently 
called  for.  When  it  came  William  dropped  down 
with  thankfulness;  sometimes  lying  torpid  till  the 
cart  moved  on,  sometimes  satisfying  hunger  and 
quenching  thirst  with  fruit  from  the  regiments  of 
orchard  trees  that  lined  the  sides  of  the  road. 

The  stout  peasant  woman  was  more  kindly  than 
a  hard  face  promised.  She  was  careful  and 
troubled  about  many  things  —  the  old  wreck  of 
humanity,  her  live-stock,  the  safety  of  herself  and 
her  bundles  —  and  she  had  lost  her  home  and 
her  livelihood;  but  she  found  time  to  think  of 
Griselda  and  do  what  she  could  for  her.  She  ar- 
ranged her  straw  pillow,  wiped  the  dust  from  her 
face,  and  from  time  to  time  raised  her  that  she 
might  hold  a  cup  to  her  lips.  Somewhere  about 
midday  she  attended  to  the  general  needs;  the 
cart  was  halted  and  she  doled  out  a  ration  all 
round  —  hunks  of  bread  chopped  from  a  yard  of 
loaf  and  portions  of  a  half-liquid  cheese.  Wil- 
liam was  not  forgotten,  and  shared  with  the  rest 
of  the  party;  they  ate  with  the  cart  drawn  up  in 
a  field  a  little  way  from  the  road;  the  horse  graz- 
ing, the  goat  tethered  to  one  of  the  wheels,  the 
peasants  and  William  sitting  on  the  ground  and 
Griselda  lying  in  her  straw.  William  climbed  up 
beside  her  and  coaxed  a  little  wine  between  her 


164    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

lips;  she  had  swallowed  hardly  a  mouthful  when 
she  turned  her  head  aside  and  pushed  the  mug 
feebly  away.  He  was  not  sure  if  she  responded 
when  he  spoke  to  her  and  stroked  her  hand ;  she 
muttered  once  or  twice  but  it  was  only  a  sound  to 
his  ears.  For  a  moment  —  perhaps  it  was  the 
raw,  red  wine  that  had  mounted  to  his  head  — 
there  came  over  him  a  sort  of  irritation  at  her 
long  and  persistent  silence.  She  must  know  what 
it  meant  to  see  her  suffer  and  have  no  word ;  he 
felt  she  might  have  tried  to  rouse  herself  to  the 
extent  of  one  little  smile  of  comfort. 

The  afternoon  was  as  the  morning  —  a  weary 
journeying  whereof  he  knew  not  the  goal.  The 
gray  horse  plodded,  the  women  sat  hunched  amid 
their  bundles,  and  William  tramped  on  his  blis- 
tered feet  at  the  tail  of  the  creaking  cart;  when 
he  looked  ahead  the  road,  as  far  as  his  eye  could 
reach,  was  dotted  with  fugitive  tramps  and  fugi- 
tive vehicles  —  and  when  he  looked  back  there 
were  others  following  in  their  tracks.  For  the 
most  part,  however,  he  looked  neither  back  nor 
forward  but  trudged  with  his  eyes  on  the  ground 
through  the  whitened  grass  at  the  roadside.  No 
rain  had  fallen  for  many  days  and  the  road  was 
deep  in  dust;  it  hung  heavy  in  the  air  and  when  a 
car  went  by  it  rose  in  clouds  like  smoke.  The 
trees  were  thick  with  it,  and  every  man's  gar- 
ments were  powdered  by  its  uniform  gray. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     165 

More  than  once  their  way  led  them  through  a 
village  —  which  might  have  been  always  the  same 
village,  so  alike  was  its  aspect  and  its  doings. 
Always  some  of  the  houses  would  be  closed  and 
some  in  the  act  of  emptying;  in  each  and  all  was 
the  same  scene  of  miserable  haste,  of  loading 
carts,  of  families,  scared  and  burdened,  setting 
out  on  their  flight  to  the  southward.  It  was  a 
scene  that  grew  so  familiar  to  William  that,  stag- 
gering with  the  weight  of  his  own  weariness,  he 
hardly  turned  his  head  to  watch  it;  it  affected  him 
only  by  the  halts  it  caused,  by  the  need  of  ma- 
neuvering through  a  crowd.  Cut  off  from  his  fel- 
lows by  the  lack  of  intelligible  speech,  he  trudged 
on  like  an  animal  at  the  tail  of  the  cart,  ignorant 
as  an  animal  of  what  the  next  hours  might  bring 
him. 

There  were  moments  when  it  seemed  to  him 
that  he  was  asleep  and  would  surely  waken;  when 
he  put  out  his  hand  to  touch  something  and  feel 
that  it  resisted  and  was  real  —  a  dusty  axle,  a 
gate,  a  wall,  the  dusty  bark  of  a  fruit-tree.  And 
there  were  other  moments  when  the  now  was  real, 
and  he  seemed  to  have  newly  wakened  from  the 
dream  of  a  world  impossible  —  of  streets  and 
stations  and  meals  that  came  regularly,  of  life 
that  was  decent  and  reasonable  and  orderly,  with 
men  like  unto  himself.  .  .  .  Late  in  the  after- 
noon he  started  and  lifted  his  head  in  sudden 


i66    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

trembling  recognition  of  a  sound  reminiscent,  and 
because  reminiscent  beloved  —  the  near-by  whis- 
tle of  a  passing  engine,  the  near-by  clank  of  a 
train.  The  note  of  the  whistle,  the  sight  of  a 
long  line  of  trucks  —  but  a  field's-breadth  away 
behind  a  fence  —  brought  a  rush  of  hope  to  his 
heart  and  a  rush  of  tears  to  his  eyes.  His  soul 
thrilled  with  the  promise  of  them;  after  the  vaga- 
bond horror  of  the  last  few  days  they  stood  for 
decency,  for  civilization,  for  a  means  of  escape 
from  hell.  His  eyes  followed  the  train  with 
longing  as  it  snorted  over  a  level  meadow  and 
wound  out  of  sight  behind  a  hill  —  followed  it 
with  longing,  with  something  that  was  almost 
love. 

A  mile  or  two  farther  they  passed  a  level  cross- 
ing and  soon  after  came  again  on  a  village.  It 
was  larger  than  any  they  had  so  far  traversed, 
and  in  ordinary  times  must  have  been  of  a  pros- 
perous importance ;  now  many  of  its  windows 
were  bolted  and  shuttered,  denoting  the  flight  of 
inhabitants  whom  others  were  preparing  to  fol- 
low. The  sun  was  red  in  the  west  when  they 
reached  its  outskirts. 

It  was  when  they  were  about  halfway  along 
the  wide  paved  street  that  there  came  a  loud  cry 
from  the  cart  —  so  loud  and  so  sudden  that  the 
driver  pulled  at  his  horse. 

The  cry  had  come  from  the  hard-faced  peasant 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     167 

woman  who  was  leaning  over  Griselda.  The  life 
in  William  stood  still  as  he  saw  her  face,  and  she 
had  to  beckon  to  him  twice  before  he  moved  to 
climb  into  the  cart;  she  gave  him  a  hand  as  he 
climbed  and  half  jerked  him  over  the  bundles. 
.  .  .  Griselda  had  died  very  quietly  in  the  straw 
at  the  bottom  of  the  cart. 


CHAPTER  XII 

SOME  one,  he  thought,  kept  him  back  from 
the  body  while  they  lifted  it  down  from  the 
cart;  there  was  a  stir  and  bustle  and  three 
or  four  people  gathered  round,  hiding  it  for  a 
moment  from  his  sight.     One,  he  remembered, 
had  the  goat  by  the  horns  and  was  trying  to  drag 
it   aside;   the   goat   was   refractory,   kicked   and 
bleated  and  made  itself  the  center  of  a  scuffle. 
Afterwards  he  pushed  through  them  all  and  stood 
looking  down  at  his  wife. 

As  he  looked  at  her  —  limp,  with  glazed  eyes 
and  fallen  jaw  —  there  swam  before  his  memory 
a  pitiful  vision  of  the  dear  Griselda  he  had  mar- 
ried. He  saw  her  —  this  huddle  of  rags  and  dirt 
—  in  her  wedding  garments,  fussed  and  dainty, 
with  her  bouquet  tied  with  suffragette  ribbons. 
He  remembered  the  expression,  self-conscious  and 
flushing,  wherewith  she  had  given  her  hand  that 
he  might  place  the  ring  on  her  finger;  and  how, 
when  they  were  first  alone  as  man  and  wife,  he 

had  taken  the  hand  that  wore  the  ring  and  kissed 

1 68 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    171 

She  put  a  hand  on  his  arm  and  led  him  unre- 
sisting down  the  street  —  a  hundred  yards  or  so, 
past  the  church  and  into  a  house  standing  back 
from  the  road  in  a  garden.  He  knew  afterwards 
that  it  was  the  village  presbytery  and  that  the  lit- 
tle woman  who  moved  aside  from  the  garden  gate 
to  let  them  pass  in  was  the  priest's  elderly  house- 
keeper. His  companion  spoke  to  her  in  French, 
no  doubt  to  explain  their  arrival;  and  the  old 
woman  trotted  ahead  to  the  house,  opened  a  door 
to  the  right  and  ushered  them  into  a  sitting-room 
that  smelt  of  unopened  window.  It  was  a 
ceremonious  as  well  as  a  stuffy  little  room;  there 
were  good  books  lying  on  a  table  in  the  center  and 
stiff  chairs  ranged  against  the  walls.  Having  of- 
fered them  a  couple  of  the  stiff-backed  chairs  the 
housekeeper  withdrew  to  her  vigil  at  the  garden 
gate;  William  sat  where  she  had  placed  him,  but 
the  Englishwoman  walked  to  the  window. 

"  I  wish  I  could  help  you,"  she  said  with  her 
back  towards  him.  "  I  know  nothing  seems  any 
good  at  such  a  time,  but  if  there  is  anything  you 
want " 

She  was  giving  him  more  than  she  knew  by  her 
presence,  by  speaking  in  their  common  tongue; 
the  sound  of  the  familiar,  comprehensible  Eng- 
lish was  as  the  breaking  of  an  iron  barrier  be- 
tween him  and  the  rest  of  mankind.  She  was 
talking  to  him  —  talking,  not  mouthing  and  mak- 


172    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ing  strange  noises.  He  was  back  in  the  world 
where  you  spoke  and  your  fellows  understood  you, 
where  you  were  human  —  intelligent,  intelligible 
—  not  an  animal  guided  by  nod  and  beck  or  driven 
to  labor  by  blows.  Comprehensible  speech  meant 
not  only  sympathy,  but  the  long-denied  power  of 
complaint  —  and  the  pent  and  swollen  misery  of 
his  last  few  days  was  relieved  by  a  torrent  of 
words.  She  stood  and  listened  while  he  sobbed 
and  talked  incoherently.  There  was  small  plan 
or  sequence  about  his  tale  —  he  went  backwards 
and  forwards  in  it,  started  afresh  and  left  gaps; 
but  she  realized  that  he  was  telling  it  not  for  her 
benefit,  but  for  his  own  relief,  let  him  pour  him- 
self out  and  refrained  from  interruption  even 
when  his  talk  was  most  entangled.  She  took  it 
as  a  good  sign  when  at  last  he  paused  and  looked 
up  to  ask  of  her  what  it  all  meant,  what  had  hap- 
pened, and  where  he  was  now? 

She  told  him,  as  briefly  as  might  be,  what 
Heinz  had  told  him  —  of  a  world  in  upheaval 
and  nations  at  grips  with  each  other;  the  same 
story  if  not  from  the  same  point  of  view.  She 
added  that  he  was  now  on  French  soil  (which  he 
had  not  guessed)  some  miles  from  the  Belgian 
frontier,  and  that  it  would  be  possible,  she  hoped, 
to  make  the  journey  onward  by  rail.  The 
French  were  falling  back  and  the  district  had  been 
warned  of  the  likelihood  of  enemy  occupation; 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    173 

she  supposed  that  the  needs  of  the  army  had  ab- 
sorbed the  local  rolling-stock,  for  there  had  been 
no  passenger  train  on  their  small  branch  line  that 
day.  The  authorities,  however,  had  promised 
one  to  Paris  in  the  morning  and  she,  herself,  was 
waiting  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  a  seat.  She 
hesitated  and  broke  off  at  the  sound  of  shuffling 
feet  in  the  passage  outside  —  slow  feet  and  un- 
certain, as  of  men  who  carried  a  burden.  Wil- 
liam heard  the  sound  likewise  and,  guessing  its 
meaning,  would  have  risen  and  gone  to  the  door; 
but  she  kept  him  to  his  seat  with  a  hand  on  his 
shoulder  and  he  obeyed  the  touch  because,  at  the 
moment,  it  was  easier  to  obey  than  to  resist.  He 
sat  and  trembled,  twisting  his  fingers,  while  the 
shuffling  died  away  into  momentary  silence,  fol- 
lowed by  trampling  and  the  closing  of  a  door  as 
the  burden-bearers  went  out.  .  .  .  Then  silence 
again,  a  much  longer  silence,  till  the  stout  priest 
entered  the  room,  moving  quietly,  as  men  are  ac- 
customed to  move  in  the  neighborhood  of  those 
who  no  sound  can  arouse  or  disturb.  He  spoke 
softly  at  some  length  to  the  Englishwoman,  who, 
having  listened  and  nodded,  turned  to  William 
and  told  him  that  if  he  would  like  to  go  to 

her 

He  followed  the  priest  down  the  passage  to  a 
room  at  the  back  of  the  house;  wherein,  on  a 
table,  and  covered  by  a  sheet,  they  had  laid  the 


174    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

body  of  his  wife.  There  were  long  candles  burn- 
ing around  the  table  and  on  either  side  of  her  a 
little  metal  vase  filled  with  roses.  The  priest 
stood  aside  in  the  doorway  for  William  to  enter, 
bowed  his  head  in  a  prayer  and  went  out;  when 
he  had  gone  William  crept  to  the  table,  turned 
the  sheet  from  her  face  and  looked  down  —  on 
Griselda  dowered  with  a  grave  dignity  that  had 
never  been  hers  while  she  lived.  .  .  .  Some  one 
had  washed  away  the  stains  of  the  road  and  ar- 
ranged the  disordered  rags  that  had  once  been  a 
dress;  the  hair  was  smoothed  out  of  its  three- 
day  tangle  and  her  poor  hands  crossed  on  her 
breast. 

He  stayed  with  her  till  dusk  had  thickened  into 
darkness,  sometimes  standing  at  her  side  to  look 
down  on  her  face,  sometimes  bowed  to  his  knees 
by  the  burden  of  the  years  without  her.  When 
the  priest  came  back  to  rouse  him  he  was  crouched 
in  the  attitude  of  prayer;  but  his  prayer  (if  such  it 
might  be  called)  was  only  the  eternal  petition  of 
the  bereaved,  "  Would  God  that  I  had  died  in- 
stead!" 

The  village  sexton  was  of  those  who  had  al- 
ready fled  at  the  rumor  of  the  oncoming  German; 
so  that  night  the  Englishwoman,  who  had  ac- 
quired in  a  west-country  garden  some  skill  in  the 
handling  of  a  spade,  took  turns  with  a  bent  old 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     175 

peasant  in  digging  a  grave  for  Griselda.  When 
daylight  failed  them  they  dug  by  the  shine  of  a 
lantern ;  the  Englishwoman  was  not  over-imagina- 
tive or  nervous  but  she  found  the  job  an  eerie  one 
—  the  more  so  since  the  square-walled  cemetery, 
like  French  graveyards  in  general,  lay  well  away 
from  its  village  —  and  she  was  glad  when  the  mo- 
ment came  to  pay  off  her  companion  and  return 
to  her  quarters  in  the  little  Hotel  de  la  Gare. 
Other  formalities  in  connection  with  the  funeral 
there  were  none  —  for  the  reason  that  the  maire 
and  his  clerk,  who  in  ordinary  seasons  would  have 
devoted  much  time  and  stationery  to  the  subject, 
had  departed  that  evening,  bearing  with  them  the 
archives  of  the  commune. 

William,  for  his  part,  spent  the  night  on  the 
priest's  horsehair  sofa,  next  door  to  the  room 
where  the  candles  burned  around  the  body  of  his 
wife.  From  weariness  of  the  flesh  he  dozed  now 
and  again;  but  for  the  greater  part  of  the  night 
lay  wakeful  and  staring  at  darkness.  There 
were  moments  when  the  horsehair  sofa  shook  be- 
neath his  sobbing;  and  there  were  others  when  it 
seemed  to  him  impossible  that  a  horror  so  brutal 
and  so  undeserved  should  have  mangled  his  harm- 
less life.  At  one  such  moment  he  crept  from  his 
couch,  felt  his  way  across  the  room  and  into  the 
passage  —  possessed  by  some  wild  and  uncon- 
fessed  thought  that  he  might  not  find  Griselda 


176    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

on  the  sheeted  table  with  her  hands  crossed  over 
her  breast.  The  door,  when  he  tried  it,  was 
locked  and  the  key  withdrawn  —  fastened  by  the 
priest  or  his  housekeeper  before  they  retired  for 
the  night ;  but  when  he  knelt  down  to  peer  through 
the  keyhole  he  could  see  two  of  the  tall  church 
candles  and  the  vase  with  its  bunch  of  white  roses 
that  some  one  had  placed  near  her  head.  He 
crept  back,  knowing  that  she  lay  there  indeed, 
and  sat  down  to  stare  at  the  darkness  till  it  soft- 
ened from  black  into  gray. 

The  morning  was  still  flushed  in  the  east  when 
the  old  woman  came  to  him  with  bread  and  a 
bowl  of  coffee;  the  coffee  was  hot,  aromatic  and 
sweet,  after  the  fashion  of  that  which  had  once 
been  brewed  by  Madame  Pcys  —  and,  remember- 
ing breakfasts  not  eaten  alone,  his  tears  dropped 
Into  it  thickly.  While  he  ate,  sitting  humped  on 
the  edge  of  the  horsehair  sofa,  the  street  outside 
was  already  astir  with  traffic,  nomad  and  military; 
those  fugitives  who  had  rested  in  the  village  for 
the  night  were  once  more  taking  to  the  road,  other 
fugitives  from  the  neighborhood  were  dribbling 
in  to  join  them,  troops  were  moving  up  and  to- 
day was  even  as  yesterday.  When  he  had  fin- 
ished his  bread  and  coffee  the  old  woman  signed 
him  to  the  kitchen  sink,  where  she  furnished  him 
with  soap  and  a  towel;  and,  the  process  of  wash- 
ing completed,  she  produced  a  clothes-brush,  led 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     177 

him  out  into  the  garden  and  attacked  with  vigor 
the  mud  and  stain  on  his  garments.  He  was 
standing  passively  while  she  scoured  at  his  shoul- 
ders when  the  Englishwoman  came  up,  and,  look- 
ing anywhere  except  at  his  face,  put  his  wife's 
rings  into  his  hands.  There  were  two  of  them 

—  the  new  gold  band,  with  a  month's  wear  be- 
hind it,   and  the  little  engagement  half-hoop  — 
and  at  sight  of  them  the  housekeeper  ceased  to 
scour  and  crept  away  with  her  brush.     He  looked 
down  at  them  lying  in  his  palm  till  the  tears  veiled 
them,  and  knotted  them  slowly  and  tightly  in  a 
corner    of    his    handkerchief.     His    companion 
cleared  her  throat  and,  still  looking  anywhere  ex- 
cept at  his  face,  told  him  that  the  train  to  Paris 

—  very  probably  the  last  one  to  run  —  would  be 
starting  that  morning. 

'Yes?"  he  said  vaguely,  conscious  that  she 
expected  a  reply. 

She  explained  that  what  she  had  meant  was, 
the  funeral  must  take  place  immediately.  .  .  . 
Chiefly  for  the  sake  of  breaking  the  silence  she 
supposed  that  his  wife  was  not  a  Roman  Catholic? 

He  answered  "  No,"  staring  at  a  row  of  holly- 
hocks and  a  butterfly  that  quivered  above  them. 

She  asked,  she  explained,  because  in  that  case 
the  priest  would  have  read  the  proper  service. 
As  it  was  .  .  .  She  hoped  he  would  understand 
that  they  had  done  their  best  to  —  be  reverent. 


178    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

But  there  were  difficulties  —  so  many  of  the 
tradesmen  were  leaving  or  had  left  already. 
Carpenters  and  so  on.  ...  He  listened  stupidly 
with  his  eyes  on  the  quivering  butterfly,  dumbly 
rebellious  at  the  cruelty  that  tore  him  even  from 
the  body  —  and  it  only  dawned  on  him  what  she 
meant  by  her  stumbling  hints  when  she  led  him 
through  the  house  to  the  front  door  where  a  cart 
stood  waiting  with  the  priest  at  the  horse's  head. 
It  was  a  farm-cart,  borrowed  by  the  priest  from  a 
neighbor;  and  on  the  floor  of  it  that  which  had 
been  Griselda  lay  coffinless  and  wrapped  in  a 
sheet.  There  were  roses  scattered  on  the  folds 
of  the  sheet  and  the  old  Frenchwoman  was  wait- 
ing at  the  gate  with  a  shapeless  little  wreath  of 
her  own  manufacture  which  she  pressed  into  Wil- 
liam's hand. 

They  set  out,  a  funeral  procession  of  three, 
which  at  other  times  would  have  drawn  many 
curious  glances;  the  priest  leading  the  horse  and 
William  and  the  Englishwoman  walking  side  by 
side  at  the  rear  of  the  cart.  The  cemetery  lay 
outside  the  village,  a  half-mile  or  so  from  their 
starting-point,  and  they  passed  wayfarers  enough 
on  the  road,  of  whom  some  bared  their  heads  and 
crossed  themselves,  and  others  were  too  busy  with 
their  own  sorrows  to  give  even  a  thought  to  the 
dead.  The  gate  of  the  graveyard  was  narrow 
and  it  was  with  difficulty  that  the  cart  was  ma- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    179 

neuvered  between  its  posts.  At  an  ordinary 
funeral  the  hearse  would  have  remained  in  the 
road;  but  this  was  no  ordinary  funeral  nor  ordi- 
nary day,  and  it  was  as  well  not  to  tempt  the  foot- 
sore fugitive  by  the  sight  of  a  vehicle  unguarded. 
Accordingly,  the  cart  was  maneuvered  through 
the  gate  before  the  priest,  William  and  the  Eng- 
lishwoman lifted  out  the  body  of  Griselda  and 
carried  it  to  the  grave  in  the  corner.  The  bent- 
backed  old  laborer  was  sitting  beside  it  on  the 
mound  that  would  shortly  fill  it;  he  rose  when  he 
saw  them,  leaned  on  his  spade  and  bared  his  gray 
hairs  to  the  dead. 

The  grave  was  shallow  —  but,  shallow  as  it 
was,  the  body,  being  coffinless,  was  lowered  with 
difficulty  and  the  Englishwoman  led  William  a 
little  way  aside  that  he  might  not  watch  while  the 
priest  and  the  peasant  performed  the  last  service 
Griselda  would  require  of  man;  he  understood 
what  she  meant  and  stood  with  his  back  to  the 
group  round  the  grave,  staring  at  a  granite  tomb- 
stone bedizened  with  massive  bead  wreaths. 
When  she  touched  him  on  the  shoulder,  as  sign 
that  he  might  turn,  the  priest  was  crossing  himself 
at  his  prayers  and  the  old  man  standing  by  the 
heap  of  new  turned  earth.  He  went  to  the  edge 
of  the  grave,  looked  down  at  the  crumpled  sheet 
and  then  stupidly  round  at  his  neighbor.  He 
said  nothing,  but  she  thought  he  was  expecting 


i8o    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

something;  so,  as  the  priest  still  prayed  with 
closed  eyes  in  silence,  she  struggled  with  the  racial 
shyness  where  things  of  the  spirit  are  concerned 
and,  swallowing  her  tears,  spoke  the  funeral 
words  for  Griselda. 

"  I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life,  saith  the 
Lord:  he  that  believeth  in  Me,  though  he  were 
dead,  yet  shall  he  live.  .  .  ." 

"  Blessed  are  the  dead  that  die  in  the  Lord 
.  .  .  they  rest  from  their  labors." 

"  Man  that  is  born  of  woman  hath  but  a  short 
time  to  live.  .  .  .  He  cometh  up  and  is  cut 
down.  ..." 

"  Lord  have  mercy  upon  us!  " 

It  was  all  she  could  remember ;  and  when  Wil- 
liam had  whispered  Amen  they  left  the  old  peas- 
ant to  his  work. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

AT  the  gate  of  the  cemetery  they  parted 
from  the  priest,  who  had  charged  him- 
self with  the  immediate  return  of  the  hay- 
cart  which  he  had  borrowed  from  a  neighboring 
farm;  he  shook  hands  with  them,  nodded  kindly 
to  the  Englishwoman's  thanks,  climbed  into  the 
cart  and  drove  off  along  the  dusty  road.  They 
saw  him  no  more  and  often  wondered  what  be- 
came of  him  when  the  wave  of  Teutonic  invasion 
swept  over  his  parish  and  himself.  Their  own 
way  lay  in  the  opposite  direction  —  first  back  to 
the  village  inn,  where  the  Englishwoman  picked 
up  her  bag  and  a  package  of  provisions  for  the 
journey,  and  then  on  to  the  station  to  await  the 
arrival  of  the  train.  William  followed  her  in- 
curiously, without  question  or  comment ;  and  when 
she  broke  silence  to  explain  what  they  were  doing 
he  assented,  speaking  with  an  effort  and  hardly 
knowing  to  what  he  assented. 

The  train  to  Paris  had  been  announced  by  the 
station  authorities  for  an  early  hour  in  the  morn- 
ing, but  morning  dragged  on  and  became  after- 

181 


182    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

noon  before  it  put  in  an  appearance.  They 
waited  through  long  and  shadeless  hours  —  till 
two  o'clock  and  after  —  at  the  most  insignificant 
of  railway  stations  with  a  crowd  of  would-be  pas- 
sengers ;  a  crowd  that  swelled  as  the  hours  crawled 
on  until  it  flowed  from  the  platform  far  along  the 
line,  and  it  seemed  doubtful  if  any  train,  however 
capacious,  could  absorb  its  swarming  multitude. 
It  sat  in  families  about  the  platform  and  camped 
and  shifted  as  an  untidy  fringe  to  the  track;  it 
was  querulous,  weeping,  apathetic  —  it  was  also, 
in  patches,  malodorous.  At  midday  it  pic- 
nicked, squalidly  enough,  out  of  bottles  and  bulg- 
ing handkerchiefs,  finding  momentary  distraction 
in  the  process;  for  the  rest  it  had  nothing  to  do 
but  exchange  its  miseries,  stare  at  the  curve  which 
the  train  must  round,  listen  uneasily  to  the  echo  of 
artillery  and  assail  the  station-master  with  com- 
plaining queries  whenever  he  dared  to  show  his 
face.  For  the  most  part  that  hapless  and  harried 
official  —  whose  subordinates  had  been  reft  from 
him  by  mobilization  and  who  was  only  too  con- 
scious that  his  time-table  was  a  snare  and  a  mock- 
ery—  lay  low  in  his  miniature  office;  whence  he 
peered  out  now  and  again  to  make  anxious  esti- 
mate of  the  numbers  that  blackened  and  over- 
flowed his  platform.  As  time  went  on  and  the 
throng  grew  denser,  he  gave  up  his  attempts  to 
reconcile  the  extent  of  the  crowd  with  the  cubic 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    183 

capacity  of  a  highly  problematical  train,  and  re- 
tiring to  his  sanctum,  in  despair  and  for  good, 
locked  the  door  on  intrusion  and  complaint. 

Whenever  —  as  happened  not  once,  but  often 
—  an  engine  was  sighted  rounding  the  curve  to 
the  northward,  there  was  instant  bustle  and  ex- 
pectation on  the  part  of  the  waiting  multitude. 
Makeshift  luggage  was  collected  and  clutched  at, 
mothers  screamed  to  their  straying  young  families 
and  herded  them  together  in  anxious  preparation 
for  the  formidable  struggle  ahead;  but  not  once 
but  often  the  alarm  was  a  false  one,  the  prepara- 
tions in  vain,  as  the  train  sped  by  without  halt. 
The  first  to  run  past  was  a  Red  Cross  train  with 
bandaged  men  showing  at  the  windows;  as  it  slid 
between  the  platforms  the  crowd  buzzed  its  dis- 
appointment and  then  —  with  the  exception  of 
some  few  determined  souls  who  vented  their  an- 
noyance in  raps  on  the  station-master's  door  — 
settled  down  in  dejection  to  continue  its  weary 
waiting.  Another  half-hour  of  sweltering  im- 
patience and  again  the  mothers  screamed  and 
rounded  up  their  families,  with  the  same  result  as 
before;  this  time  the  relentless  and  undelaying 
train  was  packed,  not  with  wounded  soldiers,  but 
with  refugees  from  higher  up  the  line  —  like  unto 
themselves  but  more  fortunate.  It  was  packed 
to  the  doors  and  beyond  the  doors  —  since  men 
were  hanging  on  the  footboards. 


184    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

For  many  reasons  William  and  his  guardian 
avoided  the  platform  where  the  crowd  was  thick- 
est and  sat  under  the  hedge  by  the  line.  During 
the  first  hour  or  two  of  their  weary  sojourn  she 
judged  him  past  rousing  and  left  him  to  his  own 
thoughts;  and  he  sat  by  her  side  with  his  hands 
hugging  his  knees  and  seemingly  unconscious  of 
her  presence.  Later,  about  midday,  when  she  fed 
him  from  the  store  of  provisions  she  had  brought 
for  the  journey,  she  essayed  to  rouse  him  by  tell- 
ing him  how  she  had  come  there  and  who  she  was. 
Her  name  was  Haynes,  Edith  Haynes;  she  had 
been  some  weeks  in  the  neighborhood,  staying  in 
the  country  house  of  some  distant  French  cousins. 
They  had  been  warned,  soon  after  hostilities 
broke  out,  that  proximity  to  the  frontier  might  be 
dangerous,  but  had  been  unable  to  leave  owing 
to  the  illness  of  one  of  the  family.  Yesterday 
the  invalid,  partially  recovered,  had  been  got  off 
with  her  mother  in  a  car  procured  with  difficulty; 
as  it  had  other  occupants  and  could  not  carry  the 
whole  party,  she  —  Miss  Haynes  —  had  vol- 
unteered to  remain  behind  and  follow  to  Paris  by 
rail.  William  listened,  occasionally  nodding  to 
show  that  he  listened;  in  a  way  he  was  grateful 
for  her  presence,  but  nothing  seemed  to  matter 
.  .  .  and,  seeing  that  it  was  as  yet  too  early  to 
help  him  to  other  thoughts,  she  left  him  again  to 
his  silence. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     185 

It  was  after  two  when  a  nearing  train  slowed 
down  as  it  reached  the  station  —  slowed  down 
and  came  to  a  standstill  to  a  tumult  of  pushing 
and  shouting.  It  was  a  train  of  more  than 
ordinary  dimensions  —  a  couple  of  engines  to  an 
interminable  line  of  third-class  carriages  and  vans 

—  but  long  as  it  was,  it  was  none  too  long  for 
the  needs  of  the  would-be  passengers.     Vans  and 
carnages   alike  were   already  well  stocked  with 
humanity;  but  the  other  humanity  on  the  plat- 
form, rendered  desperate  by  its  waiting,  hurled 
itself  at  the  doors  and  pressed  and  fought  a  way 
in.     The    sight   was  not   pleasant  —  there   was 
trampling,    expostulation,    threats.     The    angry, 
frightened  crowd  was  past  minding  its  manners, 
and  at  times  the  rush  for  the  doors  was  carried 
on  almost  with  savagery;  women  were  buffeted 

—  and  buffeted  back  —  and  children  swept  away 
in  the  press.     William  and  his  friend  —  she  was 
the  sturdier  as  well  as  the  taller  of  the  two  — 
clambered  up  the  steps  of  a  covered  truck  and 
were  thrust  through  its  opening  by  the  weight  of 
those  pressing  behind  them.     The   truck,   when 
they    gained    it,    was    close,    evil-smelling    and 
crowded ;  so  crowded  that  many  had  to  keep  their 
feet  for  lack  of  the  floor  space  to  sit.     When  the 
struggle  for  places  was  over  —  and  it  was  not 
over  quickly  —  the  train  was  packed  end  to  end 
with  sweating  and  exhausted  travelers. 


i86    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

There  followed  a  journey  that  to  those  who 
endured  it  seemed  endless,  a  crawl  punctuated 
with  halts.  The  halts  were  lengthy  as  well  as 
frequent;  sometimes  in  sidings  where  refugees 
perforce  gave  place  to  troop  trains,  sometimes  in 
junctions  where  they  pulled  up  indefinitely  at  a 
platform  and  where  worn-out  officials  could  give 
no  information  as  to  when  a  fresh  start  would  be 
made.  The  waits,  wearisome  as  they  were,  were 
by  far  more  endurable  than  the  wretched  stages 
in  between;  which  were  stages  of  sweating  heat 
and  smells,  of  stifling  and  cramped  discomfort. 
On  the  platform,  at  least,  it  was  possible  to 
stretch  and  breathe ;  in  the  vans  it  was  aching 
backs  and  bones  and  a  foulness  that  thickened 
with  the  miles.  Children  wept  and  sickened  as 
the  hours  crawled  by  and  all  through  the  dark- 
ness their  crying  was  never  stilled;  as  wretched 
little  wailing  or  angry  howl,  it  mingled  always 
with  the  throb  and  clank  of  the  train. 

The  delicate  chill  of  morning  was  as  nectar 
after  the  stench  of  the  crowded  night.  By  special 
mercy,  just  as  dawn  broke  they  drew  up  in  a  siding 
with  fields  to  the  right  and  left  of  them;  neither 
William  nor  his  friend  was  asleep  when  the  train 
stopped,  and,  crawling  over  recumbent  bodies  on 
the  floor  of  the  van,  they  dropped  down  stiffly 
from  their  pen  and  stood  breathing  in  the  clean, 
cool  wind.  With  their  damp  clothes  sticking  to 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    187 

their  heated  bodies,  they  sucked  the  air  into  their 
lungs  —  even  William,  blind  with  his  misery,  con- 
scious of  the  calm  loveliness  of  morning  on 
stretches  of  green  after  the  reek  of  the  lantern-lit 
van.  His  companion,  shuddering  at  the  sight  of 
her  hands,  went  in  search  of  water  and  discov- 
ered a  tap  on  the  platform;  whereat  William,  in 
his  turn,  drank  thirstily  and  soused  hands  and 
face  before  they  settled  down  in  a  field  at  the  side 
of  the  line.  There,  on  the  good  green  turf,  they 
shared  the  last  remnants  of  their  package  of 
food,  some  bread  and  an  apple  apiece.  For  all 
the  hours  they  had  spent  on  the  train  they  had 
accomplished  only  some  half  of  the  distance  to 
Paris;  and  as  refreshment  rooms  —  closed  or 
cleared  out  by  the  troops  —  could  no  longer  be 
counted  on  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  traveler, 
they  had  little  prospect  of  further  sustenance  till 
they  reached  their  journey's  end.  They  ate  their 
small  meal  sitting  as  far  as  they  deemed  safe 
from  the  train  and  the  crowd  it  had  disgorged 
—  ate  it  in  silence,  for  William  had  not  yet  found 
speech.  His  world,  for  the  time  being,  was  form- 
less and  void,  and,  as  such,  incapable  of  expres- 
sion. 

All  day  they  traveled,  as  they  had  traveled  on 
the  day  before:  in  jolted  crowds,  in  squalor,  in 
heat,  to  the  sound  of  the  misery  of  children. 
They  ached,  they  wearied,  they  sweated,  they 


.188    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

thirsted  —  they  halted  and  lurched  on  again;  too 
wearied  even  for  impatience,  they  endured  with- 
out complaint  until  even  the  children  were  past 
crying.  The  sun  was  low  on  the  horizon  when 
William,  drowsily  stupid,  raised  his  head  from  his 
knees  as  his  friend  touched  him  on  the  arm.  He 
looked  up  stupidly  —  the  train  was  plodding 
through  forest;  he  had  ceased  to  hope  for  the 
journey's  end  and  sat  for  the  most  part  with  his 
head  on  his  knees  in  a  dull,  half-dozing  resigna- 
tion. 

"  If  we  don't  stop  again,"  she  told  him,  "we 
ought  to  be  in  fairly  soon.  I  think  that's  Chan- 
tiily  we've  run  through.  We're  only  half  an  hour 
from  Paris- — in  ordinary  times,  that's  to  say." 

The  times  were  not  ordinary  and  they  took 
more  than  half  an  hour  —  very  much  more  —  to 
get  over  the  twenty-odd  miles.  They  slowed  to 
a  crawl  for  the  last  stretch  of  the  journey,  and 
outside  Paris,  between  Paris  and  St.  Denis,  they 
halted  and  waited  till  well  after  night  had  fallen. 
But  at  long  last  the  interminable  wait  was  ended 
and  they  creaked  and  crept  forward  to  a  plat- 
form of  the  Gare  du  Nord  —  where  William  for 
the  first  time  set  foot  in  the  capital  of  France. 
As  he  did  so  he  remembered  a  fact  that  had 
hitherto  slipped  his  memory  —  that  Heinz  and 
his  companions,  when  they  took  his  pocket-book, 
had  left  him  without  a  penny.  So  far  the  loss  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     189 

his  purse  had  not  troubled  him;  he  had  lived  as 
the  beasts  live  and  been  cared  for  even  as  they; 
but  Paris  was  civilization  where  money  would  be 
needed  for  a  lodging.  He  had  no  resource  but 
his  companion,  and,  as  they  drifted  along  with  the 
slow-moving  mass  on  the  platform,  he  appealed 
perforce  to  her. 

"  I'm   afraid,"   he  stammered,   "  I've  got  no 
money.     They  took  it  away  from  me  —  the  Ger- 


mans." 


She  reassured  him  briskly  with :  "  Don't 
worry  about  that  —  I've  got  plenty.  I'll  settle 
the  hotel  and  the  journey  —  you  can  pay  me  when 
we  get  back  to  London.  Stick  close  to  me,  what- 
ever you  do;  if  I  once  lose  you  in  this  crowd  I 
shall  never  find  you  again." 

He  replied  with  a  mutter  of  thanks,  and,  obey- 
ing her  injunction  to  stick  close,  was  crushed,  in 
her  wake,  past  the  barrier  at  the  end  of  the  plat- 
form, past  the  heated  officials  who  were  striving 
to  deal  with  the  needs  of  the  influx  of  refugees, 
and  finally  out  of  the  station.  There,  in  the  open 
space  before  the  Gare  du  Nord,  he  stepped  back 
suddenly  from  the  world  of  nightmare  into  the 
world  as  he  had  always  known  it.  The  wide,  lit 
street  in  front  of  the  station  was  filled  with  a 
moving  and  everyday  crowd,  in  his  ears  were  the 
buzz  of  the  taxi  and  the  warning  clang  of  the 
tram.  The  change  from  the  horrible  to  normal 


190    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

surroundings  —  from  brutality  and  foulness  to 
the  order  of  a  great  town  —  was  so  sudden  and 
complete  that  it  took  away  his  breath  like  a  swift 
plunge  into  cold  water;  and  as  the  life  of  the 
city  enwrapped  him  and  claimed  him  for  its  own, 
for  one  crazy  moment  it  seemed  to  him  that  the 
last  few  days  were  impossible.  Their  fantastic 
cruelty  was  something  that  could  not  have  been 
.  .  .  and  he  almost  looked  round  for  Griselda. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

EDITH  HAYNES  knew  her  way  about 
Paris;  and  the  little  hotel  in  a  quiet  side- 
street,  where  a  taxi  deposited  herself  and 
her  companion,  was  one  that  had  sheltered  her  in 
days  less  eventful  and  strenuous,  and  where  Ma- 
dame, in  consequence,  was  compassionate  and  not 
contemptuous  at  being  asked  to  shelter  two  late 
arrivals  in  the  last  stage  of  dirt  and  untidiness. 
William,  before  he  sat  down  to  eat,  had  ex- 
changed his  torn  garments  for  the  suit  of  an  ab- 
sent son,  called  up  on  the  first  day  of  mobiliza- 
tion; and  for  all  his  ache  and  dull  stupor  of  sor- 
row, he  knew  something  of  the  blessing  of  bodily 
relief  when  he  washed  in  hot  water  and  was  clean. 
He  had  had  no  real  sleep  since  the  night  before 
Griselda  died;  now  the  need  for  it  came  down  on 
him  like  a  heavy  cloud  and,  great  as  was  also  his 
need  for  food,  he  could  hardly  keep  his  eyes  open 
through  supper.  When  he  woke  next  morning  it 
was  nearing  midday  and  he  had  more  than  slept 
the  clock  round. 

191 


192    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

He  pressed  the  bell  as  he  had  been  told  to  do 
when  he  woke;  and  with  the  coffee  and  rolls  that 
arrived  at  the  summons  came  a  penciled  note  from 
his  mentor.  She  had  gone  out  to  look  up  her 
relatives,  and  also  to  inquire  about  the  time  and 
manner  of  the  journey  from  Paris  to  London;  she 
wrote  that  she  might  not  be  back  at  the  hotel  for 
some  hours,  but  the  envelope  that  enclosed  her 
communication  inclosed  likewise  a  tactfully  prof- 
fered loan  for  the  immediate  needs  of  her  fellow- 
traveler's  wardrobe.  But  for  the  reminder  it 
would  have  hardly  occurred  to  him  that  his  ward- 
robe was  in  need  of  renewal;  he  had  grown  so 
accustomed  in  the  last  long  days  to  being  ordered, 
guided,  or  driven  that  he  had  lost  the  habit  of 
directing  his  own  doings.  As  it  was,  he  break- 
fasted, dressed  himself  again  in  the  suit  of 
Madame's  absent  son,  and  was  instructed  by 
Madame  herself  where  to  find  a  barber  for  an 
overdue  shave  and  an  outfitter  capable  of  Eng- 
lish. Thither  he  went,  made  his  purchases 
mechanically  and  returned  to  the  hotel  with  his 
new  suit  of  black  in  a  parcel. 

It  seemed  to  him,  as  he  walked  the  Paris 
streets,  as  he  bought  and  paid  and  spoke  of  things 
that  did  not  matter,  that  his  sense  of  loss  and  his 
longing  for  Griselda  was  stronger  even  than  in 
the  first  hours  after  her  death.  It  was  accentu- 
ated by  his  contact  with  the  civilized,  the  normal; 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     193 

by  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  everyday  world 
to  which  Griselda  belonged.  She  had  had  no 
place  in  the  strange  French  village  where  she 
died,  no  place  in  the  misery  and  dirt  of  the 
crowded  truck;  but  here  where  life,  to  all  seeming, 
was  as  usual,  where  the  streets  were  like  enough  to 
English  streets  to  produce,  after  country  solitude 
and  the  savagery  of  bloodshed,  the  illusion  of  dear 
familiarity:  here  she  should  have  walked  with  her 
arm  in  his.  Here  she  would  have  chatted,  have 
gazed  in  shop  windows  and  bargained  .  .  .  and 
long  years  faced  him  with  their  deadly  never  as 
he  went  his  way  without  her. 

Later,  when  he  had  returned  to  the  hotel  and 
changed  into  his  new  black  suit,  a  wild  fit  of  use- 
less rage  came  over  him  —  and  alone  in  his  third- 
floor  bedroom  he  cursed  the  devils  who  had  killed 
his  wife,  the  devils  who  had  made  the  war.  Un- 
der his  breath,  lest  he  should  be  heard  in  the 
corridor,  he  called  down  the  vengeance  of  God  on 
their  evil  heads,  breaking  inevitably,  as  his  own 
store  of  invective  gave  out  into  lyrical  reminis- 
cence of  that  Biblical  lore  with  which  his  mother 
had  imbued  him  through  Sunday  after  Sunday  of 
his  childhood;  believing  in  the  God  whose  ex- 
istence he  had  usually  ignored  (and  often 
doubted)  because  of  his  need  of  an  avenger  and 
a  present  help  in  his  trouble.  In  that  moment  the 
God  whom  he  sought  —  and  it  may  be  found  — 


194    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

was  the  Lord  God  of  Hosts,  the  Mighty  One  of 
Israel,  Who  was  wont  to  strike  the  wicked  and 
spare  not;  and  the  desire  of  his  shaken  and  re- 
bellious soul  was  even  as  the  desire  of  him  who 
sang  out  his  hatred  by  the  alien  waters  of  Babylon. 
The  hotel  chambermaid  put  an  end  to  his  whis- 
pered prayer  and  anathema  by  tapping  on  the 
door  to  inform  him  that  lunch  was  waiting  on  the 
table. 

Edith  Haynes,  when  she  returned  in  the  late 
afternoon  with  news  that  the  journey  could  be 
made  on  the  following  day  by  way  of  Dieppe  and 
Folkestone,  found  him  clad  in  his  new-bought 
mourning  for  Griselda  and  poring  over  English 
newspapers.  His  eyes  were  still  haggard  and 
moved  her  to  pity,  but  she  took  it  as  a  good  sign 
that  his  stupor  of  grief  had  passed  and  that  he 
had  begun  (as  his  first  question  told  her)  to  feel 
a  need  for  more  information  which  might  bridge 
the  month's  gap  in  his  knowledge  of  the  outer 
world.  She  gave  him,  with  such  detail  as  she 
had  in  her  possession,  the  story  of  the  outbreak 
of  war  and  the  causes  thereof:  and  from  her  he 
learned  for  the  first  time  of  the  ultimatum  to 
Servia,  and  the  tension  thereby  created;  of  the 
political  consequences  of  the  invasion  of  Belgium, 
and  the  feverish  days  of  hesitation  in  England 
that  had  ended,  on  the  Fourth  of  August,  with  the 
formal  declaration  of  war.  He  listened,  some- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    195 

times  puzzled  but  always  intent,  from  time  to 
time  putting  a  question  that  revealed  his  blank 
ignorance  of  the  network  of  European  politics;  to- 
which  she  replied  as  clearly  as  she  could,  showing 
him  maps  and  talking  on  in  the  hope  of  distracting 
him  from  the  thoughts  behind  his  haggard  eyes. 
By  degrees  she  gleaned,  from  his  hesitating  queries 
and  disconnected  comments,  some  understanding 
not  only  of  his  profound  ignorance  of  the  forces 
that  had  brought  about  the  war,  but  of  the  up- 
heaval of  his  mind  and  soul  which  was  the  direct 
and  inevitable  consequence  of  the  loss  of  his 
former  faith.  Once  or  twice  as  they  talked  he 
quoted  her  scraps  and  jerks  of  anti-militarist 
propaganda  —  from  Faraday,  from  orators  of 
the  Trades  Union  Congress,  from  a  speech  of 
Philip  Snowden's  in  Parliament  urging  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  Navy —  and  she  saw  that  he  was  try- 
ing to  justify  to  himself  his  attitude  and  creed  of 
yesterday.  In  the  midst  of  a  quotation  from 
Faraday  on  the  general  strike  as  a  certain  preven- 
tive of  war,  he  broke  off  suddenly  to  appeal  to  her 
with :  "  Every  one  thought  he  was  right.  He 
seemed  so  sure.  I  didn't  see  how  he  could  be 
wrong!  " 

She  noticed  that,  wherever  their  talk  might 
stray,  he  came  back,  time  and  again,  to  his  central 
fact  —  that  the  blankly  impossible  had  happened 
and  the  jest  was  a  brutal  truth.  That,  in  the  be- 


196    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ginning,  was  all  his  mind  had  laid  hold  of;  now, 
the  first  stage  of  amazement  over,  he  was  groping 
instinctively,  and  perhaps  unconsciously,  after 
rights  and  wrongs  of  quarrel,  and  striving  to  un- 
derstand how  the  impossible  had  come  into  ex- 
istence. Edith  Haynes  had  not  passed  her  life  in 
the  atmosphere  of  Internationalism,  and  would 
have  been  more  than  human  had  she  been  an  im- 
partial guide  to  him  where  the  causes  of  war  were 
concerned  —  just  as  he  would  have  been  more 
than  human  had  he  been  capable  of  impartial 
guidance.  What  he  lacked  in  patriotism  he  made 
up  in  personal  suffering;  he  hated  the  German  be- 
cause he  had  been  robbed  of  his  wife,  and  it  added 
but  little  to  the  fire  of  his  hatred  to  learn  of  faith 
broken  with  Belgium.  If  he  listened  intently 
when  she  told  of  it,  if  he  pored  over  newspaper 
paragraphs  dealing  with  German  cruelty  to  the 
conquered,  it  was  because  they  fitted  with  his 
mood  and  justified  the  loathing  in  his  soul. 

It  was  his  persistent  poring  over  English  news- 
papers that  brought  him  in  the  end  the  salvation 
of  a  definite  purpose.  An  article  in  The  Daily 
Chronicle  —  some  days  old  —  described  the  be- 
ginning of  the  recruiting  campaign  for  the  raising 
of  Kitchener's  Army;  he  read  it  as  he  read  every- 
thing else  that  explained  or  described  the  war. 
At  first  the  article  was  nothing  but  news  to  him, 
a  mere  statement  of  facts ;  but  as  he  read  further 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN     197 

a  meaning  flamed  into  the  news.  Bereft  as  he 
was  of  guidance,  his  mind  swinging  rudderless  in 
chaos,  he  was  waiting  unconsciously  for  the  man 
or  the  impulse  that  could  seize  on  his  helpless 
emotion  and  give  purpose  and  direction  to  his  life; 
thus  the  journalist's  vigorous  appeal  to  the  na- 
tion's patriotism  was  driven  home  by  the  force  of 
his  own  experience  and  became  an  appeal  to  him- 
self. The  writer  had  illustrated  his  argument  in 
the  obvious  manner,  by  reference  to  the  condition 
of  invaded  Belgium  and  the  suffering  of  her  peo- 
ple under  the  hand  and  heel  of  the  enemy;  he 
wrote  of  women  outraged,  of  hostages  killed,  of 
cities  laid  waste,  and  of  houses  fired  with  inten- 
tion. He  was  spurred  by  indignation,  by  pity  and 
a  natural  patriotism,  and  had  laid  on  his  colors 
—  to  all  but  William  —  with  a  vivid  and  forcible 
pen.  To  William,  as  he  read,  the  result  seemed 
lame  and  pitiful,  an  inadequate  babbling  of  the 
living  horrors  that  had  burned  themselves  into  his 
soul ;  but  for  all  its  weakness  —  perhaps  because 
of  it  —  the  article  gave  him  the  impulse  for  which 
he  had  been  waiting  in  torment.  It  may  have 
been  his  very  sense  of  the  inadequacy  with  which 
it  described  what  he  had  known  that  set  his  im- 
agination to  work,  that  drove  home  its  purport 
and  made  of  it  a  lead  to  his  blind  and  whirling 
emotions.  He  read  and  re-read  while  he  quivered 
with  impatience  at  its  failure;  if  the  man  had  seen 


198    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

what  he  had  seen,  if  the  man  had  lost  what  he  had 
lost,  he  could  not  have  argued  so  tamely.  His 
pen  would  have  been  dipped  in  fire;  he  would  have 
written  so  that  all  men  reading  him  would  have 
rushed  to  arms.  The  paper  dropped  from  his 
hands  to  the  table  and  he  sat  staring  at  a  picture 
of  his  own  making  —  of  a  crowd  bitter  and  de- 
termined, moved  by  the  tale  of  wrongdoing  to  a 
righteous  and  terrible  wrath.  He  saw  it  setting 
forth  to  execute  justice  and  avenge  innocent  blood 
.  .  .  and  himself  one  of  it,  spurring  and  urging 
it  on.  So  he  first  visualized  himself  as  a  soldier 
—  an  unscientific  combatant  of  the  Homeric  pat- 
tern, but  nevertheless  a  soldier.  The  vision 
thrilled  and  inspired  him,  and  out  of  the  deep 
waters  of  his  impotent  misery  he  clutched  at  the 
knowledge  that  he  could  act,  resent,  resist;  that, 
ceasing  to  suffer  as  the  slave  suffers,  he  could  give 
back  blow  for  blow. 

There  was  enough  of  the  old  leaven  in  him  to 
bring  him  up  suddenly,  and  with  something  like  a 
round  turn,  as  he  realized  that  the  act  of  striking 
blow  for  blow  against  the  German  would  involve 
the  further  act  of  enlistment  and  the  wearing  of 
the  King's  uniform.  His  first  mental  vision  of 
his  warrior  crowd  had  been  vague  as  well  as 
Homeric;  he  had  only  seen  faces  uplifted  by 
courage,  not  the  khaki  and  buttons  below  them  — 
seeing  himself  rather  as  an  avenger  of  Griselda 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    199 

than  as  a  soldier  of  the  British  Empire.  But  it 
was  only  for  a  moment  that  he  shied  like  a  nervous 
horse  at  the  bogey  of  the  "  hired  assassin."  The 
prophets  from  whom  he  had  learned  his  one-time 
contempt  for  the  soldier  were  no  longer  prophets 
to  him,  and  his  conversion  was  the  more  thorough 
from  his  ingrained  and  extremist  conviction  that 
the  opposite  of  wrong  must  be  right.  Conver- 
sion, in  the  sense  in  which  the  word  is  employed 
by  the  religious,  describes  most  clearly  the  process 
through  which  he  had  passed:  conviction  of  igno- 
rance, the  burden  of  Christian;  a  sense  of  blind 
longing  and  humiliated  confusion  —  and  now,  at 
the  end,  light  flashed  on  him  suddenly,  salvation 
figured  by  the  sword.  ...  It  was,  so  to  speak, 
but  a  partial  salvation.  He  had  lost  his  capacity 
for  absolute  faith,  for  the  rapture  that  comes  of 
infallibility;  but  he  was  of  all  men  the  last  who 
could  live  without  guidance,  and  his  new  creed  had 
at  least  this  merit  —  it  was  supported  by  his  own 
experience.  Its  articles,  had  he  formulated  them, 
would  have  been  negative  rather  than  assertive  — 
I  have  ceased  to  believe  in  the  old,  rather  than  I 
believe  in  the  new;  but  it  gave  him  that  working 
hypothesis  without  which  life  to  him  was  impos- 
sible. 

When  he  took  his  seat,  next  morning,  in  the 
train  bound  for  Dieppe,  his  mind  was  made  up  — 
made  up  fiercely  and  definitely  —  on  his  future 


200    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

course  of  action;  and  as  a  result  something  that 
was  by  comparison  peace  had  succeeded  to  the 
chaos  and  dazed  rebellion  of  his  first  few  hours  of 
loss.  His  companion  noticed  the  change  in  his 
manner  and  bearing;  it  was  not  that  he  seemed 
more  resigned,  but  that  he  had  ceased  to  drift  — 
his  eyes  were  as  haggard  as  yesterday,  but  not  so 
vague  and  purposeless.  So  far  during  their  brief 
but  close  acquaintance  she  had  treated  him  per- 
force as  she  would  have  treated  a  child  —  provid- 
ing for  his  bodily  and  mental  needs  and  giving 
him  kindly  orders;  now,  ignorant  and  obedient  as 
he  still  was  in  the  matter  of  foreign  travel,  he  was 
once  more  a  reasonable  being.  He  was  still  for 
the  most  part  sunk  in  his  own  thoughts,  but  not 
helplessly  and  endlessly  so;  he  was  capable  of  be- 
ing roused  and  at  intervals  he  roused  himself. 
Once  when  they  halted  she  was  struck  by  the  in- 
tentness  with  which  he  gazed  at  a  trainload  of 
soldiers  in  khaki  —  new  come  from  England  and 
moving  up  from  Havre  to  the  front.  They 
crossed  at  a  wayside  station,  and  the  two  trains 
stood  side  by  side  for  some  minutes  while  William 
craned  out  of  the  window  to  stare  at  the  brown 
young  faces  that  were  thrust  from  the  opposite 
carriages.  The  sight  moved  him,  if  not  in  the 
same  fashion  as  it  moved  his  companion;  he  felt 
no  tightening  of  the  throat  and  no  pride  in  the 
men  themselves.  What  kept  his  head  at  the  win- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    201 

dow  till  the  train  moved  off  was  chiefly  the  thought 
that  soon  he  would  be  even  as  these  sunbrowned 
men  of  war,  the  personal  desire  to  know  what 
manner  of  men  they  were,  how  they  lived  and 
moved  and  had  their  daily  military  being. 
Hitherto  a  soldier  of  the  home-grown  variety  had 
been  to  him  nothing  more  definite  than  an  impres- 
sion of  uniform,  khaki  and  occasionally  red;  now, 
with  the  eyes  of  his  newborn  interest,  he  became 
aware  of  detail  that  had  formerly  escaped  him, 
and  compared  him  in  figure,  in  face  and  garment, 
with  Heinz  and  Heinz's  companions.  These  hot- 
faced  lads  smoking  pipes  and  calling  jests  would 
be  his  own  comrades  in  days  to  come;  thus  he 
studied  their  features,  their  dress,  their  manner, 
as  a  small  boy  scans  and  studies  the  bearing  of 
his  future  schoolfellows.  If  he  did  not  thrill  at 
the  sight  of  young  men  about  to  die,  he  sent  with 
them  (remembering  Griselda)  his  strong  desire 
for  their  great  and  terrible  victory. 

Those  were  the  days  just  before  Mons  was 
fought,  when  France  (and  others  with  her)  was 
hopeful  of  a  war  that  would  end  at  her  frontier 
and  beyond  it;  when,  whatever  her  wiser  soldiers 
may  have  known,  her  people  in  general  had  no 
premonition  of  the  coming  retreat  of  the  Allied 
Armies  and  the  coming  peril  of  the  capital. 
There  were  still  some  ignorant  and  optimistic 
days  to  live  before  France  aS  a  whole  would  be 


202    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

stunned  by  the  .curt  official  admission  that  the 
enemy  was  well  within  her  borders  —  since  his 
battle-line  stretched  across  the  country  from  the 
Vosges  mountains  to  the  Somme.  As  for  railway 
communication  on  the  western  lines,  the  rush  of 
returning  tourists  that  had  followed  on  the  out- 
break of  war  was  over,  and  the  rush  from  Paris 
that  began  with  the  new  threat  of  Kluck's  advance 
was  as  yet  a  thing  of  the  future.  Thus  William 
and  his  companion,  though  they  traveled  slowly 
and  with  lengthy  halts,  traveled  in  comparative 
comfort  —  finding  in  unpunctuality  and  a  measure 
of  overcrowding  but  little  to  grumble  at  after 
their  journey  by  cattle-truck  to  Paris. 

Rouen  kept  them  waiting  an  hour  or  two,  and 
there  was  another  long,  purposeless  halt  on  the 
boat  in  Dieppe  Harbor;  so  that  it  was  nigh  upon 
sundown  when  they  slipped  into  the  Channel  and 
headed  north-westward  for  Folkestone.  The 
day,  very  calm  with  the  stillness  of  perfect  sum- 
mer, was  even  as  that  day  but  a  month  ago  when 
William  and  his  little  bride  had  steamed  away 
from  Dover,  sitting  deck-chair  to  deck-chair, 
touching  hands  when  they  thought  no  one  saw 
them.  And  remembering  the  fading  of  those 
other  white  cliffs,  William's  heart  cried  out  against 
God. 

It  was  well  past  midnight  when  they  slid  into 
Folkestone  Harbor  where  again  there  were  long 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    203 

delays;  so  long  that  morning  was  red  over  France 
when  the  train  drew  away  from  the  pier.  It  was 
during  the  two-hour  journey  to  Charing  Cross  that 
William  first  spoke  to  his  friend  of  his  purpose 
of  becoming  a  soldier;  they  were  not  by  themselves 
in  the  carriage,  but  the  other  occupants  nodded 
off  to  sleep  soon  after  the  train  had  left  Folke- 
stone, and  for  all  practical  purposes  he  and  Edith 
Haynes  were  alone.  She  was  surprised  by  the 
announcement,  more  surprised  perhaps  than  she 
should  have  been  —  less  on  account  of  his  previous 
record  than  because  his  appearance  and  manner 
were  so  utterly  unmilitary.  The  British  soldier 
of  pre-war  days  was  a  type,  a  man  of  a  class 
apart;  it  was  a  type  and  class  to  which  William 
Tully  was  far  from  approximating,  and  she 
found  it  impossible  to  picture  his  essentially  civil- 
ian countenance  between  a  khaki  collar  and  cap. 
Her  surprise  must  have  shown  in  her  manner,  for 
he  began  to  explain  in  jerks. 

"  It  seems  the  only  thing  to  do,"  he  said. 
'  You  can't  sit  down  and  let  it  go  on ;  when  you've 
seen  what  I've  seen,  you've  got  to  do  what  you 
can.  And  they  want  men  —  they're  asking  for 
them.  The  papers  say  they  want  all  the  men  they 
can  get  .  .  .  it's  got  to  be  stopped  —  that  devilry 
—  somehow  or  another  .  .  .  and  there  doesn't 
seem  any  other  way.  .  .  ." 

His  voice  tailed  off  and  he  turned  his  eyes  away 


204    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

—  to  the  flying  fields  where  the  dew  was  still  wet 
and  the  shadows  still  long  upon  the  grass.  When, 
a  few  minutes  later,  he  told  her  suddenly,  "  It  was 
just  as  pretty  as  this  —  where  it  happened,"  she 
knew  that  he  was  mentally  transforming  the  peace 
and  greenery  of  a  Kentish  landscape  in  the  back- 
ground of  such  an  imitation  of  hell  as  he  had  lived 
through  in  the  Forest  of  Arden. 

It  was  not  till  they  were  well  on  the  London 
side  of  Tonbridge  that  he  turned  again  to  his 
companion.  Something  that  she  had  said  in  ap- 
preciation of  his  decision  —  a  kindly  meant  phrase 
that  commended  his  courage  —  had  seemingly 
been  held  in  his  mind. 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  think  it's  courage,  and 
I  don't  want  you  to  think  I'm  making  any  sacri- 
fice —  I'm  not.  I'm  enlisting  because  I  want  to 
enlist  —  and  there  isn't  anything  else  for  me  to  do. 
Everything's  gone  now  —  I  haven't  anything  to 
go  back  to.  No  duties  or  ...  I  don't  see  how 
you  can  call  it  a  sacrifice." 

He  swallowed  and  halted  again  and  she  could 
only  nod  in  silence.  She  knew  enough  of  him  by 
this  time  to  know  that  what  he  said  was  truth,  hav- 
ing learned  in  the  course  of  their  days  of  acquaint- 
anceship that  he  had  lost  even  more  than  his 
newly  made  wife,  his  hopes  of  a  home  and  chil- 
dren. In  very  deed  he  had  nothing  to  go  back  to, 
neither  home  nor  daily  occupation;  in  losing  his 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    205 

cocksure,  infallible  creed  he  had  lost  the  interests 
wherewith  his  days  had  been  filled.  His  meet- 
ings, his  busy  committees,  the  whole  paraphernalia 
of  his  agitator's  life,  were  with  yesterday's  seven 
thousand  years.  Even  if  Griselda  had  not  died 
he,  knowing  what  he  knew,  would  have  had  to 
begin  life  again. 

Near  Chislehurst,  reminded  of  the  nearness  of 
London,  he  put  an  apologetic  question. 

"  You'll  think  me  very  ignorant,"  he  said,  "  but 
you  see  I've  never  had  anything  to  do  with  sol- 
diers. Have  you  any  idea  how  you  set  about 
joining  the  Army?  " 

She  explained  that  he  had  only  to  offer  himself, 
and  turned  up  an  English  newspaper  bought  the 
day  before  at  Dieppe  to  point  out  a  paragraph 
giving  the  situation  of  the  various  London  recruit- 
ing stations.  He  studied  it  with  interest  and 
showed  her  that  the  nearest  to  Charing  Cross  was 
a  station  on  the  Horse  Guards  Parade.  She  had 
not  understood  that  his  intention  was  to  enlist  at 
the  moment  of  arrival  in  London,  and  suggested  a 
delay  of  a  day  or  two  for  rest  if  not  for  reflection: 
the  life  before  him  was  a  hard  one  physically,  and 
he  had  been  passing  through  a  week  of  exhaustion 
both  physical  and  mental.  To  her  arguments  he 
shook  his  head,  stubbornly  impatient;  he  was  so 
urgent  to  translate  his  new  convictions  into  imme- 
diate action  that  it  was  with  difficulty  she  pre- 


206    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

vailed  on  him  to  delay  at  Charing  Cross  for  break- 
fast, and  only  maneuvered  him  into  the  hotel  by 
assuring  him  —  whether  rightly  or  wrongly  she 
knew  not  —  that  it  was  as  yet  far  too  early  in  the 
day  for  any  recruiting  official  to  be  at  his  post. 
On  that  assurance  he  yielded,  and  they  took  their 
last  meal  together. 

She  had  contracted  an  odd  species  of  affection 
for  the  little  bereft  and  destitute  man  whom 
chance  had  thrown  on  her  hands  in  his  hour  of 
need;  it  was  difficult  for  her  to  rid  herself  of  a 
sense  of  responsibility  for  him  and  his  doings : 
and  as  they  disposed  of  their  eggs  and  bacon  she 
found  herself  wondering,  with  tears  in  her  throat, 
how  he  could  come  through  the  discipline  and 
hardship  for  which  his  soft  life  had  done  so  little 
to  prepare  him.  It  was  pathetic  and  even  ridic- 
ulous to  think  of  him  as  a  soldier,  this  wisp  of  a 
town-bred  talker;  to  think  of  him  marching  and 
bearing  arms  in  defense  of  such  as  herself  —  who 
topped  him  by  a  good  two  inches  and  had  treated 
him  almost  as  a  child.  She  coaxed  him  to  eat  a 
good  breakfast,  dawdling  over  her  own  that  he 
should  sit  and  rest  the  longer;  and  when  he  sud- 
denly remembered  to  ask  her  how  much  he  owed 
her  for  the  expenses  of  the  last  few  days,  she  gave 
him,  with  the  hastily  invented  amount,  her  address 
in  Somerset  and  made  him  promise  to  write  and 
keep  her  informed  of  his  doings.  He,  on  his 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    207 

part,  shrinking  instinctively  from  those  who  had 
shared  his  errors  in  the  old  life,  clung  to  her  as 
the  one  person  who  understood  the  new  world  into 
which  he  had  so  lately  entered  —  understood  it 
because  she  was  part  of  it;  thus  neither  was  un- 
moved when  they  shook  hands  as  friends  and 
parted  at  the  door  of  the  hotel.  She  entered  a 
taxi  for  Paddington  and  he  turned  his  face  to 
Whitehall  and  the  tent  on  the  Horse  Guards 
Parade. 

As  he  walked  down  Whitehall  his  heart  thudded 
loudly  on  his  ribs.  He  remembered,  with  a  sud- 
den tremor  of  rage,  how  Heinz  had  boasted  of 
his  Kaiser  at  Westminster  and  a  German  entry 
into  London.  The  very  thought  made  London 
dearer  and  finer  to  him,  and  he  had  a  vision  of 
himself  driving  Heinz  before  him  —  Heinz  and 
that  other,  the  round-faced  young  man  with  black 
eyebrows  who  had  worked  his  will  on  Griselda. 
He  saw  himself  striking  and  stabbing  at  the 
round-faced  young  man  —  beating  him  down 
while  he  prayed  in  terror  for  a  mercy  that  was  not 
granted.  His  lips  were  a  hard  white  line  and  his 
fingers  clenched  and  unclenched.  London !  by 
God,  it  should  be  not  London  but  Berlin  I 

He  had  never  dreamed  of  rejection;  he  knew 
vaguely  that  recruits  were  required  to  pass  some 
sort  of  medical  examination,  but  the  idea  that  his 
proffered  services  might  be  refused  had  never  en- 


208    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

tered  his  head.  Edith  Haynes,  like  himself,  had 
seen  few  English  newspapers  for  weeks;  thus  he 
did  not  know  till  he  came  to  enlist  that  the  stand- 
ard of  measurement  for  recruits  had  been  raised 
since  the  outbreak  of  war,  and  that  he,  standing 
under  five  foot  five,  was  not  up  to  the  Army's 
requirements  in  the  matter  of  breadth  and  inches. 
The  knowledge  took  him  like  a  blow  between  the 
eyes,  and  he  stood  with  dropped  jaw,  incredulous 
—  it  was  inhuman,  it  was  monstrous  that  they 
should  take  from  him  his  right  to  strike  back. 
For  a  moment  he  had  no  words;  he  dressed 
mechanically,  stupid  with  the  shock  —  while  the 
round-faced  man  grinned  damnably  over  Griselda 
dead  by  the  roadside.  .  .  .  And  when,  in  the  end, 
his  speech  came  back  and  he  tried  to  stammer  an 
appeal,  some  one  patted  him  good-naturedly  on 
the  shoulder,  put  his  hat  into  his  hand,  and  turned 
him  loose  into  a  world  that  had  no  meaning  for 
him. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THERE  were  many  parallels  to  the  case 
and  conversion  of  William  Tully  in  the 
first  few  weeks  of  the  war.     There  is, 
and  always  will  be,  the  self-centered  temperament 
that  can  shut  its  eyes  to  the  fact  and  tread  the 
pathways  of  the  paradise  of  fools,  even  if  it  treads 
them  alone ;  but  on  the  whole  humanity  is  reason- 
able  and,   given  a  fact,  however  surprising  and 
savagely  unpleasant,  accepts  it  because  it  must. 

Those  who  struggled  hardest  against  the  accept- 
ance of  the  War-Fact  of  1914  were,  naturally 
enough,  those  who  had  fiery  little  battles  of  their 
own  to  fight,  and  whose  own  warfare  was  sud- 
denly rendered  null  and  incompetent  by  a  sudden 
diversion  of  energy  and  interest  in  the  face  of  the 
national  danger.  The  war  was  the  successful 
rival  of  their  own,  their  sectional  strife,  over- 
shadowing its  importance  and  sucking  the  life 
from  its  veins.  Hence  instinctively  they  sneered 
at  it  and  strove  to  ignore  its  existence ;  hating  it 
as  a  minor  and  incompetent  artist  may  hate  the 

209 


210    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

greater  professional  rival  who  sings  or  acts  him 
off  the  stage.  Only  by  some  such  reasoning  can 
one  account  for  the  fact  that  the  aggressive  and 
essentially  militarist  type  of  political  enthusiast 
so  often  runs  to  pacifism  where  the  quarrels  of 
others  are  concerned. 

But  for  the  bitter  mischance  of  a  honeymoon 
spent  in  the  Forest  of  Arden  and  the  consequences 
thereby  brought  about,  such  would,  very  certainly, 
have  been  the  mental  attitude  of  William  Tully 
in  the  August  of  1914.  His  own  battles  would 
(have  absorbed  his  aggressive  instincts,  and,  never 
having  seen  a  shot  fired  in  anger,  he  would  have 
continued,  for  quite  a  long  time,  to  think  of  other 
battles  as  enlarged  street  riots  which  were 
thoroughly  enjoyed  by  the  bloodthirsty  soldiery 
who  provoked  them.  He  would  have  pooh- 
poohed  the  possibility  of  a  war  until  the  war  ac- 
tually broke  out;  and  then,  insisting  that  it  was 
avoidable  and  should  not  have  been,  have  clung 
angrily  to  his  customary  interests  and  done  his 
small  energetic  best  to  keep  his  comrades  from 
straying  into  that  wider  and  bloodier  field  where 
they  and  their  services  would  be  lost  to  the  sec- 
tional conflict.  Such,  very  certainly,  would  have 
been  his  course  of  action  had  he  made  his  wed- 
ding journey  to  Torquay.  Fate  and  not  tempera- 
ment had  willed  it  that  he  should  be  driven  to 
enlist  under  the  rival  banner  of  nationality;  but 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    211 

there  were  others  of  his  kidney  whom  fate  had  not 
driven  so  brutally,  and  who,  unable  to  effect,  as 
William  had  done,  a  rapid  transfer  of  allegiance 
and  antagonisms,  struggled  desperately  to  uphold, 
in  despite  of  war,  their  partially  deserted  stand- 
ard. 

Of  such  was  Faraday,  dogged  and  fiercely  inde- 
fatigable; though  the  man  had  soul  and  brain 
enough  to  feel  the  ground  rock  beneath  him.  His 
ignorance  of  European  politics  was  a  thought  less 
profound  than  William's,  but  sufficiently  profound 
to  have  bred  in  him  a  complete  disbelief  in  the  pos- 
sibility of  European  war;  hence  his  surprise  at  the 
international  earthquake  was  almost  as  great  as 
that  of  his  former  disciple.  When  the  unbeliev- 
able happened  he,  as  was  but  natural,  was  angry 
—  all  men  are  angry  when  the  habit  of  years  is 
interfered  with;  and  in  the  first  flush  of  his  an- 
noyance ascribed  the  falsification  of  his  every  pre- 
diction not  to  his  own  blundering,  but  to  the  sins 
of  those  who  did  not  think  as  he  did.  Those  who 
prophesied  war  —  so  he  argued  —  had  proph- 
esied what  they  desired.  .  .  .  All  the  same,  he 
was  not,  like  William,  devoid  of  the  imaginative 
faculty;  but  the  war  was  as  yet  a  great  way  off  and 
his  hatred  of  the  Government  of  his  own  country 
was  real.  With  time  he,  too,  came  to  understand 
that  a  people  may  have  other  foes  than  those  of 
its  own  household  and  be  threatened  with  death 


212    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

from  without;  when  he  was  called  up  under  the 
Conscription  Act  he  went  without  protest,  made 
an  excellent  soldier  and  died  fighting  in  a  night 
raid  near  Hulluch ;  but  in  the  beginning  the  habit 
and  association  of  years  was  too  strong  for  him 
and  his  bitter  dislike  of  his  neighbor  overpowered 
his  fear  of  the  German.  During  the  first  few 
weeks  of  the  war  he  held  peace  meetings  at  con- 
siderable personal  risk,  which,  as  became  a  good 
fighter,  he  took,  even  with  enjoyment;  distributed 
printed  appeals  to  pacifist  and  anti-British  senti- 
ment and  wrote  passionately,  if  with  less  than  his 
usual  clarity,  in  The  Torch.  He  could  not  in 
honesty  bring  himself  to  defend  every  action  of 
•his  country's  enemies  and  was  conscious  of  occa- 
sional difficulty  and  a  sense  of  thin  ice  underneath 
him;  at  the  same  time  it  was  against  his  tradition 
and  principles  to  admit  that  the  statesmanship  of 
the  land  he  was  born  in  could  ever  have  right  on 
its  side.  Tradition  and  principles  might  have  won 
hands  down,  making  him  ardently  and  happily 
pro-German,  had  it  not  been  for  the  complication 
introduced  by  the  attitude  of  other  nations  which, 
foreign  even  as  Germany  was  foreign,  had  chosen 
to  range  themselves  with  England.  Hence  a  dif- 
ficulty in  indiscriminate  condemnation  and  a  mo- 
mentary confusion  of  thought  and  outlook  of 
which  Faraday  himself  was  quite  clear-brained 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    213 

enough  to  be  conscious;  It  irritated  him  and  he 
was  sensible  of  failure  and  uncertainty. 

On  the  day  that  William  arrived  in  London  and 
was  refused  for  the  British  Army,  Faraday  held 
a  small  meeting  in  a  hall  in  a  Bloomsbury  side 
street.  The  object  of  the  meeting  was  to  con- 
sider suitable  methods  of  influencing  for  the  bet- 
ter the  existing  and  lamentable  condition  of  pop- 
ular opinion;  the  gathering  was  not  open  to  the 
general  public,  only  the  initiated  being  present. 
Some  thirty  to  forty  of  the  initiated,  chiefly  sec- 
retaries, chairmen  and  other  branch  officials  of  the 
advanced  socialist  group  of  which  Faraday  was 
leading  light  and  president  —  for  the  most  part 
men,  but  with  a  sprinkling  of  women  among  them. 
They  had  been  summoned  together  by  letter  and 
word  of  mouth;  the  meeting  was  private  and  con- 
sultative, described  as  for  sympathizers  only,  and 
held  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Central  London 
Branch  —  a  large  room,  sparsely  furnished  with 
chairs  and  a  platform,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Tottenham  Court  Road.  One  of  the  more 
muscular  members  of  the  branch  kept  watch  and 
ward  in  the  passage  outside  the  hall,  scrutinizing 
the  comrades  as  they  neared  the  door,  lest  any 
uninitiated  person  or  disturber  of  peace  should 
attempt  to  gain  entry  with  the  faithful;  he  was 
thrilled  with  a  vague  and  grandiose  conviction 

I 


214    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

that  the  meeting  was  of  perilous  importance, 
passed  in  his  familiars  —  they  were  all  his 
familiars  —  with  a  mysterious  nod  and  compared 
himself  to  a  sentinel  on  duty  in  a  post  of  extreme 
danger.  He  was  a  young  man  domiciled  in  the 
Hampstead  Garden  Suburb,  with  uncut  hair,  a 
flowing  tie  and  a  latent,  if  hitherto  undeveloped 
sense  of  humor;  and  a  year  or  two  later,  when  the 
Army  had  claimed  him,  and  he  stood  in  the  Ypres 
salient,  in  a  post  of  extreme  danger,  he  grinned 
unhappily  between  the  shell-bursts  as  the  night  of 
the  meeting  came  back  to  him. 

Among  his  thirty  or  forty  familiars  he  passed 
in  William  Tully  —  who  had  come  to  the  hall 
mechanically,  scarce  knowing  where  his  steps  were 
guiding  him.  No  wind  of  the  meeting  had  come 
to  him,  but  the  place  was  one  of  his  haunts  —  the 
Central  London  Branch,  of  which  he  was  chair- 
man, assembled  there  on  business  once  a  week. 
Further,  it  was  used  as  the  address  of  the  Branch, 
and  he  was  accustomed  to  call  there  almost  daily 
for  his  official  letters  or  the  transaction  of  small 
official  business.  Thus  it  happened,  at  the  close 
of  a  bewildered  day,  that  he  turned  to  it  almost 
by  instinct. 

Perhaps  it  was  a  sense  of  homelessness  that 
drove  him  to  its  open  doors  —  for  it  was  not 
until  well  towards  evening  that  he  had  summoned 
up  courage  to  enter  his  own  dwelling,  the  little 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    215 

flat  he  had  not  yet  lived  in,  made  ready  for  him- 
self and  Griselda.  If  there  had  been  anywhere 
else  to  go  perhaps  he  never  would  have  entered 
it;  but  his  bachelor  lodging,  he  knew,  was  let  to  a 
new  tenant,  and  he  had  not  money  enough  in  his 
pocket  to  pay  for  a  lodging  elsewhere.  His  day 
had  been  spent  on  foot;  after  his  refusal  at  the 
recruiting  station  he  had  walked  he  knew  not 
whither  —  here,  there,  through  street  after  street, 
that  he  might  not  stop  and  think;  and  when,  in  the 
late  afternoon,  he  found  himself  sitting  on  the 
turf  of  Primrose  Hill,  he  could  not,  for  the  life 
of  him,  remember  the  route  by  which  he  had 
reached  it.  Sheer  weariness  of  body  drove  him 
to  shelter,  and  half  an  hour  later  he  was  slowly 
dragging  his  feet  up  the  stairway  that  led  to  the 
flat. 

The  woman  who  was  to  "  do  "  for  himself  and 
Griselda  had  been  installed  on  the  premises  for 
some  days  past;  since  the  outbreak  of  war  she  had 
been  in  hourly  expectation  of  the  arrival  of  her 
master  and  mistress  and  in  some  perturbation  at 
the  continued  lack  of  news  from  them.  As  Wil- 
liam was  about  to  walk  past  the  door  she  had 
opened  to  him  she  stayed  him  with  an  inquisitive 
question  —  he  could  not  remember  the  form  it 
took  but  knew  that  it  must  have  referred  to  Gri- 
selda's  absence,  for  he  told  her  abruptly  that  his 
wife  had  died  in  France.  She  threw  up  her  hands 


216    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

with  a  screaming  exclamation  as  he  hurried  past 
her  to  shut  himself  into  the  bedroom. 

There,  afraid  of  her  curious  sympathy  and 
questions,  he  shut  and  locked  himself  in;  with  the 
poignant  loneliness  of  the  brand-new  furniture 
that  he  and  Griselda  had  chosen  and  lovingly  ad- 
mired; with  the  poignant  company  of  Griselda's 
photograph,  smiling  self-consciously  from  the 
center  of  the  mantelpiece  and  set  in  an  ornate 
silver  frame  that  was  one  of  her  wedding  pres- 
ents. He  held  it  in  his  hands  till  the  tears  blinded 
him,  kissed  it  sobbing  and  laid  it  face  downwards. 

The  "  general,"  burning  with  inquisitive  sym- 
pathy, induced  him,  after  one  or  two  unsuccessful 
attempts,  to  open  the  door  to  her  knocking; 
pressed  on  him,  in  spite  of  denials,  a  scratch  meal 
of  tea  and  poached  eggs,  and  hovered  round  while 
he  ate  it.  As  befitted  the  occasion  she  held  her 
apron  to  her  eyes  while  she  extracted  as  much  as 
she  could  in  the  way  of  information.  Later,  as 
she  washed  up  in  the  kitchen,  she  heard  him  mov- 
ing from  one  tiny  room  to  another  —  consumed 
with  a  restless  misery  and  a  restless  wonder  as  to 
what  he  should  do  with  his  life.  Still  later  she 
heard  him  go  out  again;  though  he  had  hidden 
away  the  self-conscious  photograph,  thrusting  it 
out  of  sight  into  a  drawer,  the  brand-new  furniture 
was  always  there  and  always  waiting  for  Griselda. 
The  moment  came  when  he  could  no  longer  suffer 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    217 

its  company  and  went  out  into  the  street  to  avoid 
it.  Other  purpose  in  walking  he  had  none  —  and 
thus  it  happened  that,  mechanically  and  without 
intent,  he  drifted  into  the  Bloomsbury  side-street 
where  Faraday  held  his  meeting. 

The  important  doorkeeper  would  have  greeted 
him  with  more  than  a  nod  —  would  gladly,  in 
fact,  have  detained  him  after  his  four  weeks'  ab- 
sence to  exchange  comments  and  views  on  the 
European  situation;  but  William,  in  entering, 
made  no  response  to  his  "Hallo,  back  again!" 
which  it  may  be  he  did  not  even  hear.  He  walked 
straight  past  the  sentinel  and  into  the  bare  fa- 
miliar room  —  where  everything,  from  the  seats 
to  their  occupants,  was  just  as  it  had  been  and 
where  every  face  was  known  to  him.  Time,  for  a 
moment,  turned  back  in  its  traces  and  yesterday 
unrolled  before  his  eyes.  He  gazed  at  it  and  sat 
down  slowly  —  by  himself  in  the  last  row  of 
chairs.  .  .  .  Edwardes,  the  Central  London  sec- 
retary, was  hugging  his  ankle  as  he  always  hugged 
it,  and  Mrs.  Jay-Blenkinsop,  the  formidable  treas- 
urer of  the  Golder's  Green  branch,  frowned 
through  her  pince-nez  at  the  speaker  with  her 
chin  uplifted  as  of  old,  wore  the  same  capacious 
sandals  —  her  crossed  knees  showed  them  —  and 
the  same  cold-gravy-colored  robe.  And  her  son, 
young  Jay-Blenkinsop,  as  his  habit  was,  sprawled 
sideways  on  one  chair  and  curled  his  long  limbs 


218    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

round  another.  It  was  all  as  it  had  been;  and 
Faraday,  on  the  platform,  was  speaking  with  the 
accents  of  yesterday. 

The  important  doorkeeper  was  not  the  only 
comrade  who  had  noticed  William's  return:  one 
or  two  heads  were  turned  as  he  came  in,  but  for 
the  most  part  the  audience  was  intent  on  the  words 
of  the  speaker.  The  heads  that  turned  made 
some  sign  of  pleased  recognition  to  which  William 
responded  automatically,  unknowing  that  he  did 
so.  From  his  seat  near  the  door  his  eyes  wan- 
dered slowly  over  the  platform,  the  hall  and  its 
occupants  —  slowly  and  with  a  dull  and  detached 
curiosity.  What  he  saw  there  and  heard  was  un- 
real, like  a  scene  in  an  unconvincing  play;  he  had 
a  sense  of  looking  at  these  people  from  a  great 
way  off,  of  hearing  their  voices  from  a  distance. 
Something  separated  and  held  him  removed  from 
them.  .  .  .  He  had  great  difficulty  in  giving  his 
attention  to  what  the  speaker  was  saying;  yet  in 
the  old  days  Faraday  had  always  stirred  him  and 
to-night  he  was  speaking  well. 

From  thirty  to  forty  convinced  adherents  as- 
sembled at  a  private  conference  are  not  the  ma- 
terial upon  which  a  public  orator  usually  throws 
away  his  best  endeavors;  but  Faraday  that  night 
was  speaking  not  so  much  to  his  audience  as  to 
himself.  Unadmitted,  even  to  his  secret  soul,  he 
had  great  and  fierce  need  of  conviction;  it  was 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    219 

with  his  own  doubts  that  he  wrestled,  at  his  own 
head  that  he  flung  both  his  jeers  and  his  argu- 
ments. He  was  of  a  finer  because  more  intel- 
ligent mold  than  the  Edwardeses  and  Jay-Blenk- 
insops  who  heard  him  and  who  were  still  thinking 
of  the  European  tragedy  as  a  red  herring  drawn 
by  the  cunning  politician  across  the  path  of  prog- 
ress. Not  for  him  was  their  happy  impervious- 
ness  to  the  new  idea,  and,  looking  down  from  his 
platform  on  their  assembled  faces,  it  may  have 
struck  him,  not  pleasantly,  that  these  people  were 
in  part  of  his  making;  they  were,  at  any  rate,  the 
product  of  a  system  of  which  he,  in  common  with 
politicians  of  every  creed,  had  not  scrupled  to 
make  full  use. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  he  spoke  feelingly  and  well 
that  night;  far  better  and  more  feelingly  than  was 
needed  by  the  number,  the  attitude  and  caliber 
of  his  audience,  which  was  comfortably  and  stub- 
bornly determined  to  agree  with  him  before  he 
opened  his  mouth.  He  had  not  come  to  the  meet- 
ing with  intent  to  be  so  lengthy  and  urgent;  he 
had  planned  to  be  nothing  more  than  brief  and 
businesslike,  to  give  and  invite  suggestions  for  a 
vigorous  prosecution  of  the  anti-war  campaign; 
but  when  he  rose  to  open  the  discussion  he  was 
carried  away  by  his  own  doubts  and  emotions ;  and 
the  "  few  remarks "  he  had  thought  to  make 
flared  out  into  a  veritable  speech.  He  fought 


220    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

with  and  poured  scorn  on  himself  in  the  name  of 
others,  rallying  his  feebleness  with  argument  and 
sneering  at  his  own  hesitations.  Thus  he  spoke 
eloquently  and  deserved  the  applause  which 
greeted  him  when  he  sat  down. 

Edwardes  followed  him,  in  response  to  the  in- 
vitation for  suggestions:  a  little  be-spectacled 
Labor  man  whose  ideal  was  a  world  of  commit- 
tees. There  had  been  something  alive  about 
Faraday's  outpouring;  it  was  the  speech  of  a  man 
who,  however  resentfully,  understood  that  the 
world  had  moved.  But  as  Edwardes  quacked 
earnestly  about  branch  propaganda  as  an  antidote 
to  militarism  and  a  means  of  diffusing  the  inter- 
national idea,  the  sense  of  unreality  descended 
again  upon  William.  Branch  propaganda  —  lit- 
tle leaflets  and  meetings  —  when  guns  made  a 
pulp  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  men  were  being  shot 
against  walls!  Resolutions  in  minute-books 
against  wrongs  like  Griselda's  and  his  own !  For 
the  first  time  for  many  days  he  felt  a  desire  to 
laugh,  and,  if  it  had  not  been  for  his  sense  of  the 
distant  unreality  of  the  proceedings,  perhaps  he 
would  have  been  moved  to  actual  expression  of 
perverted  and  unmirthful  mirth. 

It  was  young  Jay-Blenkinsop  who  made  the 
proceedings  real  to  him;  and,  but  for  his  interven- 
tion at  the  end  of  the  discussion,  it  is  probable 
that  William  himself  would  have  taken  no  part  in 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    221 

it.  He  would  have  listened  for  a  little,  perhaps 
to  the  end,  and  then  crept  out  to  his  loneliness; 
but  Jay-Blenkinsop  roused  him  and  swept  him  out 
of  himself.  .  .  .  Edwardes  quacked  earnestly  for 
ten  minutes  or  so;  the  aggrieved  outpourings  of 
a  soul  to  which  the  really  serious  fact  of  the  war 
was  that  it  had  caused  a  certain  amount  of  back- 
sliding and  even  desertion  amongst  the  weaker 
brethren  of  his  branch;  and  when  he  sat  down, 
after  a  moment  of  silence,  Jay-Blenkinsop  rose  to 
his  feet.  (In  the  dark  ages  that  had  ended  a 
week  ago  William  thought  highly  of  Edgar  Jay- 
Blenkinsop,  esteeming  him  a  youth  of  great 
promise.)  With  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  his 
broad  shoulders  lolled  against  the  wall  and  his 
hair,  as  usual,  drooped  over  an  eyebrow,  he 
drawled  out  fine  scorn  upon  the  leaders  of  the 
Labor  Party  for  their  treachery  to  the  cause  of 
the  People  and  their  lack  of  the  sense  of  Brother- 
hood. There  was  no  particular  purport  in  his 
vaguely  scathing  remarks,  which  (the  meeting  be- 
ing nominally  for  business  purposes)  might  well 
have  been  ruled  out  of  order;  but  he  was  enjoying 
the  sound  of  his  own  full  voice  and  his  mother 
gazed  up  at  him  admiringly. 

It  was  more  himself  than  his  vague  remarks 
that  made  William  flare  and  see  red  —  his  six 
feet  of  conceited  boyhood  propped  sprawlingly 
against  the  wall.  As  he  listened  he  was  gripped 


222    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

with  a  sudden  hatred  of  Jay-Blenkinsop,  a  hatred 
that  had  its  roots  in  envy  of  his  physical  perfec- 
tions; it  was  for  lack  of  that  broad  deep  chest  and 
those  long  strong  limbs  that  the  recruiting  officer 
would  have  none  of  him  .  .  .  and  a  muscular 
boy,  a  potential  soldier,  lolled  hands  in  pockets 
and  cracked  ignorant  jests  at  men  who  knew  bet- 
ter than  he  did,  at  the  agony  of  such  as  himself. 
As  the  young  man  drawled  onward  William 
breathed  fast  and  thickly  and  clutched  at  the  chair 
in  front  of  him;  till  Jay-Blenkinsop,  having  suffi- 
ciently scarified  the  official  representatives  of 
Labor,  went  on  to  some  smartly  turned  gibes  at 
the  recruiting  campaign  and  the  gulls  who  were 
caught  by  its  appeals.  One  of  his  sarcasms 
brought  him  the  ready  laugh  he  had  counted  on 
—  and  something  on  which  he  had  not  counted; 
at  the  tail  of  the  laugh  came,  imperative  and 
raucous,  the  order,  "  Sit  down,  you  young  fool!  " 
Every  head  in  the  room  went  round  with  indig- 
nation to  William  —  who  most  of  the  gathering, 
Faraday  included,  now  noticed  for  the  first  time. 
He  was  on  his  feet,  stiffened  and  pallid  with  pas- 
sion; but  after  the  cry  that  had  cut  short  Jay- 
Blenkinsop  he  stood  silent,  with  his  lips  apart  and 
his  hands  clutching  at  a  chair-back.  His  fingers 
knotted  and  worked  as  they  clutched  and  his 
mouth  was  twisted  and  quivering;  he  stood  like 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    223 

an  animal  backed  into  a  corner,  defying  the  as- 
tounded eyes  and  the  open  incredulous  mouths  of 
those  who  had  once  been  his  comrades.  .  .  . 
Most  incredulous  of  all  was  the  mouth  of  Mrs. 
Jay-Blenkinsop,  who  gaped  in  amazement  at  the 
unprovoked  attack  on  her  son. 

"  May  I  ask ?"  began  Edgar  Jay-Blenk- 
insop, less  slowly  and  languidly  than  usual  — 
whereat  William,  hearing  the  silence  broken,  also 
found  words  to  his  tongue. 

'  You  may  ask,"  he  interrupted,  "  oh,  yes,  you 
may  ask!  Anything  you  like.  But  for  God's 
sake  don't  lay  down  the  law  and  make  ignorant 
assertions  —  for  God's  sake  don't  do  that.  You 
mustn't  lay  down  the  law  until  you  know  some- 
thing, until  you've  really  tried  to  find  out.  Then, 
perhaps,  you'll  have  a  right  to  speak;  now  when 

I  hear  you,  I  —  I "  From  sheer  sense  of 

the  inadequacy  of  words  his  voice  tailed  huskily 
away;  then,  with  an  odd  little  snarl  at  his  auditors, 
he  burst  out  savagely  afresh:  "You  child,  you 
great  impudent  jackanapes!  You  stand  there 
and  dare  to  make  jokes  about  the  hell  that  other 
men  have  burned  in.  The  flames  and  the  blood 
and  the  guns  and  people  dying  in  the  road.  You 
talk  blank  foolery  and  laugh  about  it  —  you  laugh 
and  turn  up  your  nose.  You  think  you're  clever 
—  and  enlightened  —  and  it  sickens  me,  sickens 
me  to  hear  you!  " 


224    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

He  finished  on  a  note  that  was  almost  a  scream, 
and  they  looked  at  him  aghast  and  dumfounded. 
It  was  his  face  that  held  them  even  more  than  his 
disconcerting  words  —  all  but  Edgar  Jay-Blenkin- 
sop,  who,  pricked  in  his  vanity,  would  have  ac- 
cepted the  challenge  and  started  again  had  not 
Faraday  silenced  him  with  a  turn  of  the  head  and 
a  gesture.  Still  more  pricked  in  his  vanity  he 
slid  to  a  chair,  muttering  sulkily  and  red  to  the 
neck. 

"  Tully "  began  Faraday  with  reproof  in 

his  voice  —  but  Tully  defied  even  his  mentor. 
Not  savagely  and  with  contempt,  as  he  had  defied 
and  decried  Jay-Blenkinsop,  but  as  one  who  had 
a  right  to  be  heard. 

"  He  mustn't  talk  like  that  till  he  knows  some- 
thing. It's  child's  talk  —  ridiculous  babble.  I 
know  what  I'm  saying  —  I've  come  from  it  — 
and  I've  a  right  to  tell  him  what  I  know.  Not 
one  of  you  here  has  seen  what  I  have  —  you're 
just  guessing.  When  a  shell  bursts.  .  .  .  I've 
seen  a  man  with  his  legs  like  red  jelly  and  a  horse 
.  .  ."  he  choked  at  the  memory.  "  That's  be- 
ing a  soldier  —  let  him  fight  and  he'll  find  it  out. 
Now  he  thinks  it's  what  he  said  just  now  —  a  sort 
of  game  that  they  like.  Everything  he  said  was 
mean  little  nonsense  —  how  dare  you  listen  to  it 
and  laugh  at  his  silly  little  jokes?  What's  the  good 
of  saying  that  it  shouldn't  happen?  Of  course  it 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    225 

shouldn't  happen  —  we  all  know  that  —  of  course 
it  shouldn't  happen,  but  it  does.  And  you  can't 
stop  it  with  sneers  about  soldiers  and  Kitchener. 
.  .  .  It's  hell  and  the  mouth  of  hell  —  I've  seen 
it.  He  says  he  wouldn't  lift  a  finger  to  keep  them 
out.  Do  you  know  why  he  says  that?  It's  be- 
cause he  can't  imagine  what  it  means.  I  would. 
I'd  die  to  keep  them  out,  because  I've  seen.  .  .  . 
I've  seen  a  man  shot  —  not  a  soldier,  just  an 
ordinary  man  —  put  against  a  wall  and  shot  while 
his  wife  howled  like  a  dog.  Two  men  —  and 
their  wives  standing  by.  They  might  do  that  to 
him  if  they  came  —  has  he  ever  thought  of  that? 
—  while  his  mother  howled  like  a  dog."  He 
shot  out  a  quivering  finger  at  the  open-mouthed 
Mrs.  Jay-Blenkinsop.  "  And  his  women  — 
would  he  let  them  do  as  they  liked  with  his 
women  ?  They  would  if  they  came  here  —  he 
can  take  my  word  for  it  they  would.  Would  he 
ask  them  in  politely  and  shake  hands  and  give 
them  drinks  and  let  them?  ...  If  they  came, 
people  would  run  from  them,  leaving  everything 
they  had  —  beggars.  Would  he  like  to  be  driven 
and  beaten  and  made  to  work  like  a  slave?  I've 
had  that  —  I've  been  driven  and  beaten  and  made 
to  work.  And  I've  run  from  them  and  starved 
and  hidden  because  I  was  afraid.  And  my  wife 

died  —  they  killed  her " 

There  was  a  gasp,  a  rustle  of  movement  and  a 


226    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

sudden  straightening  of  backs.  Every  one  in  the 
room  knew  Griselda  Tully,  many  quite  intimately, 
and  not  a  few  had  been  at  her  wedding;  amaze- 
ment and  wrath  against  the  disturber  of  the  peace 
gave  way  to  a  real  consternation,  and  in  the  silence 
that  followed  the  momentary  rustle  William 
heard  Faraday's  "Good  God!"  .  .  .  They 
stared  at  him  in  dumb  consternation,  dimly  con- 
scious, perhaps,  that  they  were  in  the  presence 
of  an  eternal  fact,  and  that  the  little  man  who 
stabbed  at  them  with  a  trembling  forefinger  was 
the  embodiment  of  that  sense  of  injustice  and 
agony  which  makes  men  cry  to  Heaven  for  venge- 
ance and,  Heaven  failing  them,  take  the  sword 
and  smite  for  themselves.  Dolly  Murgatroyd, 
Griselda's  bridesmaid,  who  had  twice  accom- 
panied Griselda  to  Holloway,  saw  and  shrank 
from  the  reality  of  that  tortured  revolt  which  for 
years  she  had  striven  to  simulate  under  the  lash 
of  her  leaders'  bombast.  ...  In  face  of  the  fact 
that  was  William  their  theories  wilted  and  failed 
them,  and  the  new  black  suit  of  their  comrade 
Tully  was  to  them  as  the  writing  on  the  wall  at 
the  feast  of  Belshazzar  —  and  came,  like  that 
other  writing  on  the  wall,  at  the  moment  when 
the  evil  from  which  they  had  hidden  their  faces 
was  an  evil  actually  accomplished.  In  each  man's 
heart  was  a  faint  reflection  of  the  amaze  that  had 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    227 

fallen  on  William  and  Griselda  when  their  world 
first  crumbled  about  them. 

The  sudden  movement,  the  chairman's  exclama- 
tion and  the  abashed  silence  that  followed  it 
checked  William  and  brought  him  to  a  standstill; 
speech  failed  him  and  he  stood  with  his  mouth 
half  open  while  the  meeting  stared  at  him  motion- 
less. There  was  a  blank  period  of  tension,  of 
awkward  stillness  in  the  presence  of  emotion,  and 
then  Faraday  coughed  uncertainly  and  moved. 
Probably  he  intended  to  say  something,  perhaps 
to  adjourn  the  meeting;  but  his  movement  and  the 
breaking  of  silence  with  his  cough  gave  William 
back  his  voice  and  he  spoke  before  Faraday  be- 
gan. 

"  And  they  won't  take  me  in  the  Army.  Al- 
though my  wife  has  been  killed  they  won't  take 
me  in  the  Army.  I'm  not  tall  enough;  I'm  only 
five  foot  five,  and  they  won't  take  me.  I've  seen 
my  wife  die  —  she  died  in  the  road  —  and  they 
refused  me  when  I  tried  to  enlist.  If  I  were  only 
two  inches  taller  —  God  in  Heaven,  if  I  were  two 
inches  taller!  " 

The  high,  tight  voice  broke  suddenly  and  he 
wept  with  his  face  in  his  hands.  For  the  space  of 
a  painful  moment  there  was  no  sound  in  the  room 
but  his  sobs  —  no  man  knowing  what  to  do  or 
where  to  turn  his  eyes  until  Faraday  came  down 


228    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

from  the  platform.  The  tread  of  his  feet  on  the 
gangway  broke  the  spell  of  embarrassed  silence 
—  and  chairs  were  moved  softly  and  the  occupants 
looked  away  from  William  as  Faraday  took  him 
very  gently  by  the  arm  and  led  him  out  into  the 
street. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THERE  was  to  be  a  gulf  henceforth  be- 
tween William  and  Faraday,  and  the 
twain  who  had  once  lived  so  near  to- 
gether were  to  see  but  little  of  each  other;  yet  it 
was  Faraday  who  gave  him  the  first  word  of  com- 
fort as  he  walked  by  the  side  of  his  former  dis- 
ciple on  the  road  to  William's  flat.  "If,"  he 
said  suddenly  and  awkwardly  —  they  were  near- 
ing  their  destination  and  it  was  the  first  time  he 
had  opened  his  lips  since  he  led  William  out  of 
the  hall  — "  if  it's  this  recruiting  business,  this 
refusal,  that's  adding  to  your  trouble,  I  don't 
think  you  need  be  too  much  discouraged. 
Honestly  —  you  see  it  isn't  necessarily  final.  I 
know  for  a  fact  they're  refusing  men  now,  because 
they  can't  equip  them  as  fast  as  they  come  in. 
They  haven't  the  uniforms,  the  accommodation, 
or  the  arms,  and  that's  why  they  sent  up  the  stand- 
ard for  recruits  with  a  rush.  But  if  the  thing's 
as  big  as  they  say  —  the  common  talk  is  that 
Kitchener  has  prophesied  three  years  of  it,  and 

229 


230    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

it's  very  likely  true  —  they'll  be  wanting  every 
man  who'll  come  in  before  they've  done  with  it. 
Not  only  the  big  chaps  —  every  one.  It  will 
merely  be  a  question  of  a  few  months  —  at  the 
outside  only  a  few  months.  So  I  shouldn't  take 
this  refusal  to  heart." 

His  message  of  comfort  cost  Farc.ch.y  some- 
thing to  deliver;  it  was  the  sheer  wretchedness  of 
the  broken  little  man  beside  him  that  moved  him 
to  deny  his  principles,  by  implication  if  not  in  so 
many  words.  The  only  audible  reply  that  he  re- 
ceived was  a  sniff,  but  even  in  the  darkness  he 
knejv  that  his  inconsistency  had  not  been  wasted, 
and  that  William  had  gained  from  it  some  meas- 
ure of  help  and  consolation.  He  said  no  more, 
and  they  parted  with  constraint  on  the  pavement 
outside  the  flat  —  to  tread  through  the  future 
ahead  of  them  their  separate  and  several  ways. 
Faraday  did  not  go  back  to  his  meeting;  he  left  it 
to  break  up  or  pursue  as  it  would,  while  he  walked 
the  streets  restlessly  alone. 

Between  the  uttering  and  fulfillment  of  Fara- 
day's prophecy  William's  way,  for  the  next  few 
weeks,  was  the  way  of  drift  and  uncertainty;  it 
was  also  the  way  of  great  loneliness,  and  experi- 
ence entirely  new  to  him.  Loneliness  not  only 
by  reason  of  the  loss  of  his  wife,  but  because  of 
the  gap  that  the  war  had  made  between  himself 
and  his  former  associates.  With  the  ending  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    231 

his  platform  and  committee  career  he  was  cut  off, 
automatically   and  completely,   from  the   fellow- 
ship of  those  who  had  been  his  co-workers  in  the 
various  causes  and  enthusiasms  he  had  once  es- 
poused and  advocated.     It  was  not  that  all  of  his 
former  co-workers  would  have  disagreed  with  his 
altered  point  of  view;  his  was  not  the  only  per- 
version to  militarism  the  stalwarts  had  to  deplore ; 
it  was  merely  that  he  ceased  to  meet  them.     All 
the  same  the  new  isolation  in  which  he  lived  was 
largely  due  to  his  own  initiative  or  lack  of  it, 
since  many,  even  among  the  stalwarts,  would  have 
given  him  kindly  welcome  and  done  their  best  to 
be  of  help  to  him  personally;  but  after  the  meet- 
ing in  Bloomsbury  he  felt  small  desire  to  seek 
them  out.     On  the  contrary,  he  shrank  into  him- 
self and  avoided,  as  far  as  possible,  any  contact 
with  those  whose  very  presence  would  remind  him 
of  the  busy,  self-satisfied  life  he  had  passed  in 
their  company,  of  the  vanished,  theoretical  world 
where  he  had  met  Griselda  and  loved  her.     It  was 
a  real  misfortune  that  his  small  private  income, 
though  to  a  certain  extent  affected  by  the  war,  was 
yet  sufficient  to  keep  a  roof  over  his  head  and 
supply  him  with  decent  necessaries  of  food  and 
clothing.     Thus,  he  was  not  driven  to  the  daily 
work  of  hand  or  brain  that  might  have  acted  as 
a  tonic  to  the  lethargic  hopelessness  of  his  mood. 


232    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Nature  had  not  made  him  versatile  and  he  had 
lived  in  a  groove  for  years;  and,  his  occupation 
as  a  public  speaker  gone,  he  was  left  without  in- 
terest as  well  as  without  employment.  More 
than  once,  goaded  into  spasmodic  activity  by  some 
newspaper  paragraph,  he  offered  himself  vaguely 
for  war-work —  only  to  be  discouraged  afresh  by 
the  offer  of  an  entirely  unsuitable  job  or  by  delays 
and  evasions  which  might  have  discouraged  men 
more  competent  and  energetic  than  himself. 

In  one  respect  fortune  was  kind  to  him;  he  was 
able,  within  a  week  or  two  of  his  return  to  Lon- 
don, to  get  rid  of  the  lease  of  the  haunted  little 
flat  in  Bloomsbury.  The  place  was  dreadful  to 
him,  with  its  empty  demand  for  Griselda,  and  he 
left  it  thankfully  for  a  lodging  in  Camden  Town. 
There  for  some  weeks  he  lived  drearily  in  two 
small  rooms,  with  no  occupation  to  fill  up  the  void 
in  his  life,  passing  hermit  days  in  the  company 
of  newspapers  and  poring  over  cheap  war  litera- 
ture; he  bought  many  newspapers  and  much  war 
literature  and  aroused  the  sympathy  of  his  elderly 
landlady  by  his  helplessness  and  continual  loneli- 
ness. What  kept  him  alive  mentally  was  his 
thirsty  interest  in  the  war;  anything  and  every- 
thing that  dealt  with  it  was  grist  to  his  mill,  and 
he  acquired  necessarily  in  the  course  of  his  eagei 
reading  some  smattering  of  European  history 
and  the  outlines  of  European  geography.  The 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    233 

pamphlet  and  journal  soon  ceased  to  satisfy,  and 
he  felt  the  need  of  supplementing  their  superficial 
comments  and  sketchy  allusions  by  reading  that 
was  not  up-to-date.  A  newspaper  denunciation 
of  the  Silesian  policy  of  Frederick  the  Great  led 
him  to  Macaulay  and  others  on  the  Kaiser's  an- 
cestor, and  references  to  the  Franco-German  War 
resulted  in  the  borrowing  from  the  nearest  Free 
Library  of  a  volume  of  modern  French  history. 
One  volume  led  on  to  others  and  the  local  librarian 
came  to  know  him  as  a  regular  client. 

His  reading  was  haphazard,  but  perhaps,  for 
that  reason,  all  the  more  informative  and  illumi- 
nating. So  far  he  had  acquired  such  small  learn- 
ing as  he  possessed  on  a  definite  and  narrow  plan, 
assimilating  only  such  facts  as  squared  with  his 
theories  and  rejecting  all  the  others;  where  his 
new  studies  were  concerned  the  very  blankness  of 
his  ignorance  was  a  guarantee  of  freedom  from 
prejudice.  He  stumbled  amongst  facts  and  opin- 
ions, making  little  of  them  and  yet  making  much 
—  since  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  there  was  no 
glib  mentor  to  guide  him  and  he  was  thrown  on 
his  own  resources.  With  his  theories  demolished 
and  his  mind  blank  as  a  child's,  he  became  aware 
of  phases  of  human  idea  and  striving  of  which  he 
had  known  nothing  in  the  past,  and  the  resulting 
comprehension  of  the  existence  of  spheres  outside 
his  own  increased  his  sense  of  the  impossibility  of 


234    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

his  previous  classification  of  mankind  into  the 
well-intentioned  and  the  evil.  His  own  experi- 
ence had  shown  him  that  there  might  be  at  least  a 
third  class  —  the  ignorant,  the  mistaken,  to  which 
he,  William  Tully,  belonged  —  and  his  reading, 
by  its  very  vagueness,  confirmed  that  personal  ex- 
perience. As  he  floundered  through  histories,  be- 
wildered and  at  random,  he  realized  dizzily,  but 
none  the  less  surely,  something  of  the  vast  and 
terrifying  complexity  of  these  human  problems 
upon  which  he  had  once  pronounced  himself  with 
the  certainty  of  absolute  ignorance. 

The  Free  Library,  though  he  knew  it  not,  was  a 
salve  to  his  wounded  heart;  all  unconsciously  he 
had  done  the  best  for  himself  in  applying  his  mind 
to  matters  of  which  his  little  wife  had  known 
nothing.  Bismarckian  policy  and  the  Napoleonic 
Wars  were  topics  he  had  not  discussed  and  inter- 
ests he  had  not  shared  with  her;  hence  they  tended 
to  come  between  him  and  her  memory  and  dis- 
tract him  from  lonely  brooding.  Without  his  new 
studies  he  might  have  drifted  into  sheer  melan- 
cholia and  helplessness;  as  it  was,  he  burned  mid- 
night gas  over  his  books  and  kept  his  brain  alive. 
In  a  measure  his  interest  in  his  new  studies  was 
personal;  the  craving  to  strike  back  was  always 
with  him  and  his  reading  fed  and  fanned  it;  begin- 
ning without  system  he  was  naturally  enough  at- 
tracted by  the  drama  and  movement  of  the  French 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    235 

Revolutionary  and  Napoleonic  epoch,  read  avidly 
all  that  the  librarian  could  give  him  on  the  subject 
and  molded  his  ideas  of  a  soldier's  life  and  mili- 
tary science  on  the  doings  of  men  of  those  days. 
The  seed  of  hope  that  Faraday  had  implanted 
did  not  die,  and  he  thought  of  himself  as  a  soldier 
to  be,  while  queer  little  ambitions  flamed  up  in 
his  barren  heart.  He  read  of  Ney  and  Murat, 
who  had  carried  marshals'  batons  in  their  knap- 
sacks —  until,  the  fervor  of  his  obsession  growing, 
he  dreamed  of  himself  as  an  avenging  leader,  and, 
with  a  half-confessed  idea  of  fitting  himself  for 
the  office,  applied  hours  to  the  study  of  the  art  of 
war  through  the  medium  of  an  obsolete  volume 
on  military  lore  picked  up  from  a  second-hand 
bookstall  in  the  Charing  Cross  Road.  By  its  aid 
—  it  had  been  published  in  the  early  'fifties  —  he 
attempted  to  work  out  the  strategy  of  Kluck  and 
Joffre,  and  spent  long  evenings  poring  over  dia- 
grams explanatory  of  the  tactics  of  Napoleon  at 
Montereau  or  the  Archduke  Charles  at  Essling. 

For  a  time  his  only  real  human  intercourse,  and 
that  by  letter,  was  with  Edith  Haynes;  he  had 
written  to  her  telling  of  his  rejection  for  the  Army 
and  she  wrote  to  him  more  than  occasionally. 
She  was  fixed  busily  in  her  Somersetshire  home, 
looking  after  the  property  of  a  brother  fighting 
in  Flanders,  acting  as  bailiff  and  herself  taking  a 
hand  in  farmwork.  For  the  first  few  weeks  after 


236    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Griselda's  death  she  remained  William's  only 
friend  in  the  new  world  of  war,  and  it  was  not 
until  he  had  been  settled  for  nearly  two  months 
in  his  Camden  Town  lodging  that  he  discovered 
that  some  at  least  of  his  former  associates  had 
seen  fit,  like  himself,  to  reconsider  their  views  and 
take  up  arms  for  their  country.  He  ran  against 
one  of  them  —  Watson,  in  the  old  days  a  fiery 
committee-member  of  his  branch  —  in  the  garb 
of  the  London  Scottish;  and  he  did  not  know  how 
lonely  he  had  been  until  he  spent  an  evening  in 
the  convert's  company,  talking  his  heart  out,  talk- 
ing of  the  war  and  himself. 

With  the  first  announcement  of  the  reduction  in 
the  standard  of  height  for  recruits  he  tried  to 
enlist  again  and  was  again  refused  —  this  time 
by  the  doctor  who  seemingly  had  doubts  about  his 
heart.  On  the  way  home  a  fool  woman,  arrogat- 
ing to  herself  the  right  to  make  men  die  for  her, 
offered  him  a  white  feather  as  he  stood  waiting  for 
his  'bus  —  whereupon  he  turned  and  swore  at  her, 
using  filthy  words  that  were  strange  to  his  lips  till 
her  vapid  little  face  grew  scarlet.  That  day,  for 
the  first  time,  his  books  were  no  comfort  to  his  soul 
and  he  thrust  them  away  and  sat  brooding  —  un- 
derstanding perhaps  how  personal  and  revengeful 
had  been  his  interest  in  the  lore  of  the  past,  un- 
derstanding how  strong  had  been  the  dreams  and 
ambitions  he  had  cherished  in  his  empty  heart. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    237 

Watson,  dropping  in  for  a  final  chat  before  start- 
ing on  foreign  service,  found  him  sullen  and  inert 
before  his  fire,  and,  casting  about  for  a  method 
of  comfort,  suggested  application  to  another  re- 
cruiting station;  he  knew,  he  said,  of  more  than 
one  man  who,  refused  at  a  first  medical  examina- 
tion, had  been  passed  without  trouble  at  a  second. 
Hope  was  beaten  out  of  William  and  he  shook 
his  head  ...  all  the  same,  next  morning  he  tubed 
to  the  other  end  of  London,  there  to  make  his 
third  attempt. 

He  asked  his  way  to  the  townhall  and  in  a 
species  of  dull  resignation  stood  waiting  his  turn 
for  the  ordeal  of  medical  inspection.  When  it 
came  he  went  listlessly  through  the  now  familiar 
process,  stripped,  was  weighed  and  measured,  was 
pummeled,  showed  his  teeth,  answered  questions. 
It  was  the  stethoscope  that  Jiad  done  the  business 
yesterday,  and  would  do  it  again  to-day;  not  that 
there  was  anything  the  matter  with  him  or  his 
heart  —  it  was  just  the  blind  cruel  stupidity  that 
was  always  and  in  everything  against  him.  .  .  . 
While  the  doctor  bent  to  listen  he  was  wondering 
what  he  should  do  with  to-morrow,  what  he  should 
do  with  the  next  day,  what  he  should  do  with  his 
life! 

He  had  made  so  sure  of  a  third  rejection  that 
he  could  hardly  believe  his  ears  when  he  heard  he 
was  up  to  the  physical  standard  required  of  a 


238    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

soldier  of  the  King.  "  You've  made  a  mistake," 
was  on  the  tip  of  his  tongue,  and  though  he 
checked  the  words  before  they  were  uttered,  he 
stood  dazed  and  staring,  much  as  he  had  done  on 
the  day  he  was  first  refused.  He  could  not  re- 
member clearly  what  happened  to  him  next  or 
what  he  did;  he  went  where  he  was  told,  he  sat 
and  waited,  he  repeated  words  which  he  knew 
must  have  been  the  oath;  his  fellows  talked  to 
him  and  he  answered  back  .  .  .  but  all  he  was 
conscious  of  was  the  stunning  fact  of  his  ac- 
ceptance. It  seemed  to  him  Griselda  must  know 
and  rejoice  —  and  he  had  thoughts  of  her  watch- 
ing him,  of  her  white  soul  blessing  him  to  victory. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

A  PENCILED  scrawl  dispatched  from  a 
mushroom  camp  in  the  H'ome  Counties 
told  Edith  Haynes  that  William  was  at 
last  a  soldier;  it  was  brief,  written  shakily  by  a 
man  tired  in  body  but  uplifted  in  spirit,  informed 
her  that  he  had  just  been  absorbed  into  a  London 
battalion,  that  he  had  not  yet  got  his  uniform,  was 
sleeping  in  a  barn  and  drilling  hard  and  concluded 
with  the  words  "  Thank  God !  "  She  answered 
the  scrawl  by  return  of  post  and  a  few  weeks  later, 
hearing  nothing,  wrote  again;  but,  in  spite  of  her 
request  for  further  news,  for  month  after  month 
she  waited  in  vain  for  a  successor  to  the  shaky 
scribble. 

When  it  came  the  war  had  been  in  progress  a 
couple  of  years  and  the  address  was  a  procession 
of  letters  —  whereof  the  three  last  were  the 
B.E.F.  that  denoted  service  over-Channel.  It 
was  a  restrained  and  correct  little  letter,  on  the 
face  of  it  uninteresting  and  not  much  longer  than 
the  last,  but  differing  from  it  in  that  it  was  written 

239 


240    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

in  ink  and  in  the  tidy,  clerical  hand  which  William 
had  acquired  in  the  days  of  his  boyhood  for  the 
use  of  the  insurance  office.  It  expressed  regret 
for  his  lengthy  silence,  but  did  not  attempt  to  ex- 
plain it;  and  went  on  to  relate  that  before  coming 
to  France  he  had  been  an  orderly-room  clerk,  that 
he  was  at  present  at  an  advanced  base  —  he  must 
not  of  course  give  its  name  —  where  he  was  em- 
ployed in  office  work,  principally  the  typewriting 
of  letters.  It  concluded  with  an  assurance  that 
he  had  not  forgotten  her  kindness  and  a  hope  she 
would  write  to  him  again  .  .  .  and  she  read  and 
re-read  the  polite  little  missive,  half-guessing  what 
lay  between  its  lines. 

It  had  been  written  in  an  interval  of  that  typing 
of  local  official  communications  which  was  Private 
Tully's  daily  contribution  to  the  waging  of  the 
European  War;  and  it  had  not  been  written  earlier 
because  Private  Tully  was  too  sullen  of  heart  to 
write. 

For  a  few  weeks  only  he  had  known  what  it  was 
to  be  a  soldier  of  England  in  the  making;  he  had 
drilled,  he  had  marched,  he  had  learned  to  hold  a 
rifle  and  his  body  had  ached  with  the  discipline. 
He  had  lain  down  at  night  so  weary  that  he  could 
not  sleep,  and  he  had  risen  giddily  in  the  morning 
in  fear  of  the  day  that  was  coming.  Other  men 
filled  out  and  hardened  with  their  training,  grew 
healthy,  muscular  and  brown  —  and  he  set  his 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    241 

teeth  and  argued  with  himself  that  this  stage  of 
sick  exhaustion  was  only  a  stage  and  in  time  he 
would  be  even  as  they.  W'hat  he  lacked  in 
strength  he  made  up  in  fiery  willingness,  overtax- 
ing his  energy  by  dogged  efforts  to  keep  level  with 
broader  shouldered,  tighter  muscled  men,  and 
steadfastly  refusing  to  admit  that  his  bodily 
misery  was  more  than  a  passing  discomfort. 
More  than  once  a  good-natured  comrade  sug- 
gested a  visit  to  the  doctor  —  whereat  William 
would  flush  as  at  an  insult  and  turn  on  the  med- 
dler almost  savagely. 

He  held  on  longer  than  he  could  have  done  un- 
aided, by  virtue  of  much  kindly  help.  Once,  in  a 
sudden  need  for  sympathy  he  had  told  to  one  of 
his  fellows  the  story  of  Griselda  and  his  own  con- 
version to  militarism;  and,  unknown  to  himself, 
the  story  went  the  round  of  his  mess.  From  the 
beginning  the  men  had  treated  him  with  the  in- 
stinctive kindness  that  the  stronger  feels  for  the 
weakling,  but  from  that  time  forth  their  kindness 
was  more  than  instinctive ;  they  ranged  themselves 
tacitly  on  the  weakling's  side  in  his  struggle  with 
his  own  deficiencies.  Little  odd  jobs  of  cleaning 
and  furbishing  were  done  for  him  —  often 
secretly,  he  knew  not  by  whom  —  and  no  man 
was  ever  too  weary  to  take  on  work  that  would 
spare  him.  They  were  in  a  conspiracy  to  save 
him  from  blunders  —  to  warn  him  or  shield  him 


242    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

from  consequences,  and  as  far  as  camp  life  per- 
mitted they  coddled  him,  with  something  of  the 
sweet  roughness  wherewith  Nelson  was  coddled 
by  his  captains. 

All  the  same,  and  in  spite  of  coddling,  the 
breakdown  came  as  it  was  bound  to  do  in  the  end; 
the  doctor  who  refused  had  been  wiser  than  the 
man  who  passed  him.  There  was  nothing  ur- 
gently or  seriously  wrong  with  his  health;  but  he 
was  not  made  soundly  enough  to  stand  the  violent 
and  sudden  change  from  a  sedentary  life  to  a  life 
of  unceasing  exertion.  He  had  never  taken  much 
out-of-door  exercise;  had  always  trained  or 
'bused  it  rather  than  travel  afoot;  and  of  late 
his  days  had  been  spent  entirely  between  the  four 
walls  of  his  Camden  Town  sitting-room. 

It  was  on  the  homeward  stretch  of  a  route 
march  that  his  strength  failed  him  suddenly  and 
he  knew  that  he  could  do  no  more ;  his  pack  was 
a  mountain,  his  body  was  an  ache,  and  a  blackness 
closed  upon  his  eyes.  He  fought  very  gallantly 
to  save  himself  and,  by  the  dogged  effort  of  his 
will,  kept  going  for  a  few  minutes  more.  "  I  can 
do  ten  steps,"  he  told  himself  and  counted  each 
step  as  he  took  it ;  then,  the  first  ten  accomplished, 
"  Now  I  can  do  ten  more."  So  he  kept  going  for 
a  few  yards  more  and  dragged  foot  after  foot  till 
he  had  readied  the  tale  of  two  hundred;  at  which 
point  —  twenty  tens  —  he  staggered,  fell  out  of 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    243 

the  ranks  in  a  faint  and  was  brought  back  to  camp 
on  a  stretcher. 

That  was  the  end  of  his  soldiering  with  pack 
and  rifle ;  from  the  day  of  his  breakdown  on  the 
route  march  his  platoon  knew  him  no  more  and 
when  he  came  out  of  hospital,  some  three  weeks 
later,  he  was  put  on  to  clerical  duties.  As  or- 
derly-room clerk  he  handled  a  typewriter  instead 
of  a  bayonet,  and  handled  it  steadily  as  the  months 
lengthened  into  years.  Others,  his  contempo- 
raries, completed  their  training,  left  the  camp, 
and  went  off  to  the  front;  he  remained,  at  first 
savagely  resentful  and  later  sullenly  resigned. 

His  conception  of  soldiering,  derived  as  it  was 
from  his  own  brief  and  fiery  experience  in  Bel- 
gium, from  the  descriptive  articles  of  war  cor- 
respondents and  his  reading  of  bygone  campaigns, 
had  never  included  the  soldier  who  was  merely  a 
clerk.  He  had  never  realized  that  a  man  in  uni- 
form was  not  necessarily  a  man  of  blood;  the 
revelation  came  to  him  only  when  he  copied  letters 
and  routine  orders,  filed  papers  and,  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  was  back  at  his  desk  in  the  in- 
surance office.  His  daily  duties  mocked  and  de- 
rided the  hopes  and  ambitions  wherewith  he  had 
joined  the  Army;  and,  ticking  at  his  typewriter,  he 
contrasted,  half-ashamedly,  the  blank  reality  with 
the  strenuous  and  highly  colored  dream.  One 
phase  of  that  dream  —  inspiring  then,  ridiculous 


244    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

now  —  had  shown  him  to  himself  as  the  hero  of 
some  bloody  enterprise  and  the  central  figure  of 
such  a  scene  as  he  had  read  of  in  Napoleonic  his- 
tory; a  scene  of  be-medaling  and  public  praise  in 
token  of  duty  bravely  done.  He  had  pictured  it 
often,  awake  and  asleep  .  .  .  and  fancied  Gri- 
selda  looking  down. 

Slowly,  under  the  benumbing  influence  of  office 
routine,  his  revengeful  ambitions  faded,  and  with 
them  his  half-acknowledged  hope  of  emulating 
Murat  and  Augereau.  His  interest  in  the  war 
had  been  fundamentally  a  personal  interest,  and 
though  there  had  grown  up  in  him,  by  force  of 
circumstance,  a  tardy  consciousness  of  his  Eng- 
lishry,  it  was  hardly  strong  enough  to  inspire  him 
with  pride  in  a  humble  and  wearisome  duty  done 
in  the  name  of  England.  Be  it  said  in  excuse  for 
him  that  few  men  could  feel  pride  in  the  labor  of 
dealing  with  daily  official  communications  —  the 
duty  of  copying  out  vain  repetitions  and  assisting 
in  the  waste  of  good  paper.  The  stilted  useless- 
ness  of  half  the  documents  was  evident  even  to 
William;  and  there  were  moments  when  he  told 
himself,  in  savage  discontent,  that  he  would  have 
been  less  unprofitable  in  civilian  idleness  than 
busied  in  promoting  futility. 

For  a  time  he  was  jolted  out  of  his  rut  by  his 
transfer  to  France  in  the  August  of  1916.  He 
was  drafted  out,  at  a  few  hours'  notice,  with  a 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    245 

batch  of  men  destined  for  clerical  duties,  and 
found  himself  planted  in  a  small  French  town 
round  which  camps  were  spreading  in  a  fringe  of 
tent  and  hutment,  and  where  house  after  house 
was  being  rapidly  annexed  for  the  service  of  the 
British  Army.  But,  save  for  change  of  scene  and 
country,  the  new  rut  into  which  he  had  been  jolted 
was  twin  to  his  old  rut  in  England.  It  was  the 
same  clerk's  life  —  this  time  in  the  office  of  a  mili- 
tary department  —  but  with  longer  and  more  ir- 
regular hours  than  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  ordinary 
civilian  clerk,  and  with  restrictions  on  personal 
freedom  unknown  since  his  days  in  the  City.  The 
Army  kept  him  as  tightly  as  his  strait-laced 
mother;  demanded  as  regular  hours  and  refused, 
as  steadfastly  as  she  had  done,  to  let  him  wander 
o'  nights. 

He  filed,  he  copied,  he  ate  his  rations  —  and 
from  the  beaten  track  of  his  everyday  life,  the 
war  seemed  very  far  away.  Sometimes  in  his  off- 
hours,  afternoon  or  evening,  he  would  tramp  up 
the  hills  that  held  the  little  town  as  in  a  cup  to  a 
point  where,  looking  eastward,  he  could  see  the 
sudden  flashes  of  the  guns.  The  bright,  fierce 
flashes  in  the  evening  sky  were  war,  real  war  made 
visible  and  wickedly  beautiful;  such  war  as  he  had 
seen  in  the  Ardennes  village,  and  such  as  he  had 
dreamed  of  fighting  when  he  first  donned  his 
khaki  tunic.  And  instead  a  chair  and  a  type- 


246    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

writer  in  the  Rue  Ernest  Dupont,  the  papers  to 
be  filed  that  a  girl  might  have  filed,  the  round  of 
safe  and  disciplined  monotony.  That  was  war  as 
he  knew  it:  an  office  with  flashes  in  the  distance. 
For  a  few  days  after  his  arrival  in  France  his 
new  surroundings  interested  him  —  the  cobbled 
roads,  the  build  of  the  houses,  the  sound  of 
French  in  the  streets;  but  once  their  strangeness 
had  worn  off  he  accepted  and  ceased  to  notice 
them.  He  was  not  sufficiently  educated,  suffi- 
ciently imaginative  or  observant,  to  take  at  any- 
thing beyond  their  face  value  the  various  and  in- 
congruous types  of  humanity  with  which  he  was 
brought  into  contact.  The  strange  life  of  North- 
ern France  affected  him  only  where  it  touched  him 
personally,  and  to  him  the  sight  of  a  turbaned 
brown  trooper  bargaining  in  the  market-place  with 
a.  swift-spoken,  bare-headed  Frenchwoman  was  an 
oddity  and  nothing  more;  just  as  the  flamboyant 
facade  of  the  great  church  of  St.  Nicholas  was  an 
oddity,  a  building  unlike,  in  its  mass  and  its  detail 
of  statuary,  to  the  churches  he  knew  of  in  Lon- 
don. He  came  across  many  such  oddities  —  and 
having  no  meaning  for  him,  they  made  but  a  pass- 
ing impression.  After  a  week  or  two  he  no 
longer  turned  his  head  at  the  sight  of  a  gang  of 
Annamite  laborers  or  the  passing  of  a  detachment 
of  heavy-booted  German  prisoners  marched 
campwards  at  the  end  of  their  day;  these  things, 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    247 

like  the  ambulances  crawling  in  a  convoy  from  the 
station,  like  the  shuttered  French  houses  built 
squarely  round  courtyards,  became  part  of  the 
background  of  his  daily  life  and  he  ceased  to 
wonder  or  reflect  on  them.  Perhaps  his  contact 
with  alien  races,  with  strange  buildings  and  habits 
once  unknown,  may  have  increased  his  vague  sense 
of  the  impossibility  of  fitting  all  men  to  one  pat- 
tern, and  of  solving  the  problems  of  human  mis- 
government  and  government  by  means  of  the 
simple  and  sweeping  expedients  he  had  once  been 
so  glib  in  upholding;  but  on  the  whole  it  left  him. 
unaffected  because  little  interested.  His  course 
of  Free  Library  reading  had  placed  him  in  pos- 
session of  certain  scattered  facts  concerning 
France,  facts  dealing  chiefly  with  the  First  Napo- 
leon and  the  German  War  of  1870;  but  for  all  the 
hot  interest  they  had  stirred  in  him  once,  they 
gave  him  small  insight  into  the  forces  that  had 
gone  to  the  making  of  the  country  in  which  his  life 
was  spent  wearily.  He  was  lacking  entirely  in  the 
historical  sense,  the  sense  that  makes  dead  men 
alive;  thus,  in  connection  with  the  doings  of  pres- 
ent-day Frenchmen,  his  odds  and  ends  of  historical 
reading  had  little  more  meaning  to  him  than  the 
Late  Gothic  carving  on  the  ornate  portal  of  St. 
Nicholas. 

The    phase    of    warfare    with    which    France 
familiarized  him  was  not  only  secure  and  unevent- 


248    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ful;  as  far  as  the  native  was  concerned  it  was  like- 
wise prosperous.  The  town  where  he  plodded 
through  his  daily  toil  was  blessed  as  never  before 
in  the  matter  of  trade  and  turnover;  commercially 
it  blossomed  and  bore  good  fruit  in  the  deadly 
shade  of  the  upas  tree.  The  camps  and  the  of- 
fices meant  custom  to  its  citizens,  and,  whatever 
the  toll  in  the  blood  of  its  sons,  it  gained  in  its 
pocket  by  the  war.  The  Germans,  in  1914,  had 
threatened  but  barely  entered  it;  it  had  neither 
damage  to  repair  nor  extorted  indemnity  to  re- 
coup, and  money  flowed  freely  to  the  palms  of  its 
inhabitants  from  the  pockets  of  the  British  soldier. 
Its  neighbors,  a  few  miles  away,  lay  in  hopeless 
ruin,  their  industries  annihilated,  their  inhabitants 
scattered,  their  very  outlines  untraceable  — 
beaten  to  death  by  that  same  chance  of  war  which 
had  spared  the  city  in  the  cup  of  the  hills  and  ex- 
alted her  financial  horn.  Here  were  neither 
misery  nor  shell-holes;  the  local  shopkeeper  was 
solidly  content,  the  local  innkeeper  banked  cheer- 
fully and  often,  the  local  farmer  sold  his  produce 
to  advantage  and  the  volume  of  trade  in  the  dis- 
trict expanded  and  burst  new  channels.  Eating- 
houses  broke  out  into  English  announcements  con- 
cerning eggs,  fried  potatoes,  and  vegetables; 
English  newspapers  were  plentiful  as  French  in 
the  shops  and  small  boys  cried  them  in  the  streets; 
and  when  the  weekly  market  gathered  in  the 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    249 

shadow  of  St.  Nicholas,  to  the  stalls  for  hard- 
ware, fruit  and  cheap  finery  were  added  the  stalls 
that  did  a  roaring  business  in  "  souvenirs  "  for 
the  English  markets. 

His  days  were  steadfastly  regular  and  stead- 
fastly monotonous.  Each  morning  by  half-past 
eight  'he  was  seated  in  the  office  in  the  Rue  Ernest 
Dupont;  in  a  roomy  house,  most  provincially 
French,  built  round  a  paved  courtyard  and  en- 
tered from  the  street  by  an  archway.  A  project- 
ing board  at  the  side  of  the  archway  bore  the 
accumulation  of  letters  which  denoted  the  depart- 
ment by  which  the  house  had  been  annexed,  and 
on  the  door  of  the  room  where  William  labored 
was  the  legend  "  Letters  and  Enquiries."  At 
half-past  twelve  he  knocked  off  for  dinner  and 
was  his  own  master  till  three ;  then  the  office  again 
till  supper  and  after  supper  —  with  good  luck  till 
ten,  with  bad  luck  indefinite  overtime.  On  Sun- 
days he  was  his  own  master  for  the  space  of  an 
afternoon,  and  now  and  again  there  were  parades 
and  now  and  again  the  "  late  pass  "  that  entitled 
to  an  evening  at  liberty.  When  he  first  arrived 
'he  was  fed  and  roofed  in  one  of  the  camps  on  the 
borders  of  the  little  city;  later,  with  half-a-dozen 
fellows,  he  slept  and  messed  in  the  upper  rooms  of 
the  building  in  which  he  did  his  daily  work.  ... 
It  was  a  life  of  bleak  order  and  meticulous,  safe 


250    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

regularity,  poles  apart  from  his  civilian  forecast 
of  the  doings  of  a  man  of  war.  There  was  small 
thrill  of  personal  danger  about  its  soldiering;  the 
little  city  at  the  "  Front  "  was  far  less  exposed  to 
the  malice  of  enemies  than  London  or  the  East 
Coast  of  England:  and  almost  the  only  indication 
of  possible  peril  was  the  occasional  printed  notice 
displayed  in  a  citizen's  window  to  the  effect  that 
within  was  a  cellar  "  at  the  disposition  of  the 
public  in  case  of  alarm  " —  from  aircraft.  Once 
or  twice  during  the  first  year  that  William  dwelt 
there  the  anti-aircraft  section  grew  clamorous  on 
its  hills  and  spat  loudly  at  specks  in  the  blue  — 
which,  after  a  few  minutes,  receded  to  the  east 
while  the  city  settled  down  without  injury.  The 
men  in  the  town  and  quartered  in  the  camps  out- 
side it  were  for  the  most  part  office-workers,  men 
of  the  A.S.C.,  of  Labor  companies  or  Veterinary 
service ;  to  whom  the  monotony  of  daily  existence 
was  a  deadlier  foe  than  the  German. 

His  life  had  been  unusually  clean;  partly,  no 
doubt,  from  inclination  to  cleanliness,  but  partly 
through  influence  of  circumstance.  While  his 
mother  lived  he  had  small  opportunity  for  dissi- 
pation even  of  the  mildest  variety;  and  hard  on 
her  death  had  come  the  great  new  interests  which 
his  friendship  with  Faraday  opened  to  him. 
Those  interests  had  been  so  engrossing  that  he 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    251 

had  little  energy  to  spare  from  them;  all  his  hopes 
and  pleasures  were  bound  up  in  his  "  causes,"  and 
the  very  violence  of  his  political  enthusiasms  had 
saved  him  from  physical  temptation.  Thus  he 
had  come  to  Griselda  heart-whole  and  sound,  and, 
even  when  his  causes  and  his  wife  were  lost,  the 
habit  of  years  still  clung  to  him  and  the  follies 
that  came  easily  to  others  would  have  needed  an 
effort  in  him. 

Once  or  twice,  in  the  soddenness  of  his  discon- 
tent, he  was  tempted  to  turn  to  the  gross  pleasures 
of  drink  and  worse  in  which  others  found  distrac- 
tion from  their  dullness;  but  the  temptation  was 
never  an  urgent  one  and  there  was  no  great  merit 
in  his  resistance.  One  night  he  overdrank  himself 
in  a  deliberate  attempt  at  forgetfulness  —  where- 
upon he  was  violently  sick,  crawled  to  bed  throb- 
bing with  headache,  and  did  not  repeat  the  ex- 
perience. 

He  felt  himself  drifting  mentally,  and,  to  his 
credit,  made  efforts  to  save  himself;  tried  to 
awaken  an  interest  in  the  French  language,  bought 
a  dictionary  and  phrase-book  and  attended  bi- 
weekly classes  in  a  neighboring  Y.  M.  C.  A.  hut. 
He  spent  a  certain  amount  of  his  leisure  in  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  hut;  borrowing  books  from  its  li- 
brary, listening  to  its  concerts,  and  now  and  again 
making  one  at  a  game  of  draughts.  He  made  no 
real  friends  —  probably  because  he  was  not  in  the 


252    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

mood  for  making  any;  with  his  comrades  of  the 
office  he  got  on  well  enough,  but  there  was  no  such 
tie  between  him  and  them  as  had  existed  between 
him  and  the  men  of  his  mess  in  the  days  when  he 
first  donned  his  uniform.  The  hope  deferred  that 
had  sickened  his  heart  had  driven  him  in  upon 
himself;  then  his  desk-work  was  obviously  well 
within  his  powers  and  outwardly  there  was  nothing 
about  him  to  call  for  special  sympathy  and  kind- 
liness. His  fellows  mostly  looked  on  him  as  a 
harmless,  uncompanionable  chap  who  preferred  to 
be  left  to  himself. 

By  degrees  William  Tully  was  molded  to  the 
narrow  little  life  departmental  and  lived  through 
its  duties  and  hours  of  leisure  taking  not  much 
thought  for  the  morrow;  in  the  Rue  Ernest  Du- 
pont  the  war  seemed  much  smaller,  much  farther 
away,  than  it  had  seemed  at  home  in  England,  and, 
absorbed  in  its  minor  machinery,  he  could  no 
longer  consider  it  as  a  whole.  The  office  and  the 
daily  details  of  the  office,  the  companions  he 
worked  with,  disliked  and  liked,  loomed  larger  in 
his  eyes  than  the  crash  of  armies  or  the  doings 
of  men  at  the  front.  As  a  civilian  he  had 
wrestled  with  strategy  and  pored  over  maps;  as 
a  soldier  of  England  he  could  not  see  the  wood 
for  the  trees.  And  if  he  did  not  fall  mentally  to 
the  level  of  that  species  of  surgeon  to  whom  war  is 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    253 

an  agency  for  the  provision  of  interesting  cases,  it 
was  merely  because,  unlike  the  surgeon,  he  had 
little  enthusiasm  for  his  work. 

Inevitably,  with  the  passing  of  month  after 
month,  the  memory  of  Griselda  grew  less  poign- 
ant; and  with  the  soothing  of  his  sense  of  loss 
there  came  about,  also  inevitably,  a  cooling  of  his 
fury  for  instant  and  personal  revenge.  He  had 
not  forgiven  and  would  never  forget,  but  he  no 
longer  agonized  at  his  helplessness  to  strike  a 
blow;  in  part,  perhaps,  because  the  discipline  un- 
der which  he  lived  had  weakened  his  power  of 
initiative.  Though  he  chafed  under  discipline  he 
learned  to  depend  on  it  and  became  accustomed 
to  the  daily  ordering  of  his  life;  and  his  early 
training  in  the  insurance  office  stood  him  in  good 
stead,  so  that  he  performed  his  duties  with  the 
necessary  efficiency  and  smartness.  .  .  .  What 
remained  with  him,  long  after  the  memory  of  his 
dead  wife  had  ceased  to  be  an  ever-present  wound, 
was  the  sense  of  having  been  fooled  by  he  knew 
not  whom,  of  having  been  trapped  and  held  by 
false  pretenses.  The  fact  that  his  grievance  wa& 
vague  did  not  lessen  its  bitterness;  it  lay  too  deep 
for  the  grousing  that  he  heard  from  others,  and 
for  the  most  he  nursed  it  in  silence,  the  silence  of 
smoldering  rebellion. 

There  were  moments  when  his  face  must  have 
been  more  communicative  than  his  tongue;  for 


254    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

one  Sunday,  an  early  spring  Sunday  as  he  sat  on 
a  hill  above  the  town  and  stared  vaguely  at  the 
skyline,  a  man  addressed  him  with,  "  Are  you 
feeling  like  that,  mate?"  and  squatted  on  the 
grass  beside  him:  a  lean  young  man  with  a  worn 
brown  face  —  deeply  lined  on  the  forehead  and 
with  eyes,  like  a  sailor's,  accustomed  to  looking  at 
distances. 

"  I'm  like  it  myself,"  he  went  on  without  wait- 
ing for  an  answer,  and  stretched  himself  out  on  to 
his  elbow.  "  These  last  few  days  it's  been  al- 
most beyond  holding  in ;  it's  the  spring,  I  suppose, 
the  good  road  weather  and  the  sun.  I  don't  mind 
it  so  much  when  there's  mud  and  the  country 
doesn't  grin  at  you;  I  can  stand  it  well  enough 
then." 

Lying  stretched  on  his  elbow  he  began  to  talk 
about  himself.  He  was  English-born  and  he  had 
begun  his  career  at  a  desk  —  staying  there  just 
long  enough  to  save  up  his  fare  and  a  few  pounds 
to  start  him  in  Canada.  After  that  came  a  farm 
—  to  his  thinking  but  a  shade  less  narrow  than 
the  office;  to  be  left  for  the  rolling,  the  shifting 
life,  the  only  life  worth  living.  He  had  had  his 
ups,  he  had  had  his  downs  —  but  always  with  his 
eyes  on  the  distance.  Ten  fine  years  of  it,  Amer- 
ican, African,  Australian;  the  life  independent 
where  you  shouldered  your  pack  and  gave  men  the 
go-by  when  you  were  sick  of  them.  And  then,  in 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    255 

the  summer  of  1914,  a  fancy  to  see  the  Old  Coun- 
try. He  had  worked  his  passage  homeward  in  a 
short-handed  tramp  and  arrived  at  Tilbury  on  the 
day  the  Kaiser's  government  sent  its  ultimatum  to 
Russia.  Four  days  later  he  was  a  soldier  in  the 
British  Army,  and  a  year  or  so  later  had  a  knee- 
cap damaged  and  a  shoulder  put  out  of  action. 
They  had  patched  him  up  carefully,  made  quite  a 
decent  job  of  him,  and  he  walked  and  moved  his 
left  arm  with  comfort;  but,  adjudged  unfit  for 
the  fighting  line,  he  had  done  with  the  trenches 
for  good.  Permanent  base  now,  with  a  cushy  job 
at  the  office  of  the  D.D.  of  Works.  Filing  and 
copying  documents  relating  to  hut  construction; 
he  had  been  fool  enough  to  let  out  that  he  had  had 
some  small  training  as  a  clerk. 

"  In  a  way,"  he  said,  chewing  at  a  long  blade 
of  grass,  "  it's  a  good  thing  I've  got  my  stiff  knee. 
If  I  could  put  the  miles  under  me  as  I  used  to,  I 
believe  —  I  believe  I'd  go.  It  would  come  over 
me  and  I'd  go.  Not  that  I  want  to  desert,  but 
it  might  be  too  strong  for  me:  I've  always  been 
my  own  master  and  I've  always  wanted  to  know 
what  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  hill.  Straight 
on  " —  he  pointed  southward  — "  straight  on,  any- 
where. The  road  —  if  you've  once  tramped  it  " 
.  .  .  He  broke  off  and  stared  with  his  eyes  on  the 
distance  and  beyond  it. 

After  a  minute  or  two  of  silence  he  asked  Wil- 


256    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

liam  suddenly  what  had  made  him  join  the  Army; 
and  William  gave  him  confidence  for  confidence, 
attracted  he  knew  not  why.  The  man's  craving 
for  loneliness  and  bodily  exertion  was  something 
he  could  not  understand;  but  they  were  on  com- 
mon ground  in  their  mutual  rebellion  against  the 
weariness  of  daily  life.  They  talked  with  long 
silences  in  between  their  speech,  telling  out  their 
hearts  to  each  other;  or  rather  finding  in  each 
other's  presence  an  excuse  for  speaking  their 
hearts.  Later  it  seemed  odd  to  William  that 
though  they  spoke  freely  of  their  lives  and  their 
griefs  it  had  never  struck  either  of  them  to  ask  of 
the  other  his  name. 

"  So  you  joined  up  because  of  your  wife,"  said 
the  man  who  lay  on  his  elbow. 

"  Yes,"  William  answered  him,  "  I 

thought "  He  did  not  finish  the  sentence;  it 

wearied  him  now  to  remember  what  he  had 
thought. 

"  Sometimes,"  the  other  broke  the  silence,  "  I 
ask  myself  why  I  joined  up.  Don't  see  how  it 
could  have  been  patriotism;  England  hadn't  been 
anything  to  me  for  years.  My  sister  died  soon 
after  I  left  it  and  I  hadn't  any  one  else.  So  far 
as  I  can  make  out  it  never  was  much  to  me ;  I  was 
always  unhappy  in  England,  hated  school  and  of- 
fice and  towns  —  I  lived  in  a  town.  Never  knew 
what  life  could  be  till  I  got  away  from  it.  Say 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    257 

the  Germans  had  won  and  dominated  the  earth ! 
.They  wouldn't  have  dominated  my  earth.  I  could 
always  have  made  myself  a  camp-fire  where  they 
wouldn't  have  wanted  to  follow  me.  If  they'd 
sacked  London  and  swallowed  up  New  York  I 
could  have  lain  out  under  the  stars  at  night  and 
laughed  at  'em.  So  what  made  me?  ...  Some 
say  man's  a  fighting  animal." 

He  pulled  a  fresh  grass-blade  to  chew  and  rolled 
over  on  his  chest  till  his  chin  rested  on  his  hands. 

"  I  knew  I  should  hate  soldiering —  I  made  no 
mistake  about  that.  The  regularity  —  ship- 
board's too  regular  for  me.  I've  tried  it  more 
than  once  for  the  sake  of  getting  somewhere,  and 
before  the  voyage  was  half  over  I'd  always  had 
more  than  enough.  I  knew  I  should  hate  it,  but 
I  joined  up  straight  and  away.  .  .  .  I've  lost 
everything  that  made  life  good  to  me.  Other 
chaps  —  blind  chaps  and  crippled  —  might  think 
I'd  got  off  easily.  So  I  have,  I  dare  say;  but  then 
it  isn't  every  one  whose  life  was  in  moving  on. 
Often  when  I  was  alone  I've  shouted  and  laughed 
just  to  feel  how  my  legs  moved  under  me.  .  .  . 
It's  the  devil  —  this  compound  —  but  even  if  I 
were  out  of  it,  I'm  a  lame  thing.  When  the  war 
ends  I'm  a  lame  thing.  Not  what  most  people 
would  call  crippled,  of  course;  I  can  walk  a  few 
miles  and  feed  myself,  and  to  look  at  me  you 
wouldn't  know  there  was  anything  at  all  the  mat- 


258    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ter.  If  I  were  a  townsman  it  wouldn't  make  very 
much  difference;  if  I'd  stayed  a  clerk  I  could  go 
on  being  a  clerk.  But  I  can't  be  ...  what  I 
was.  I've  lost  everything  that  made  life  good  to 
me.  What  for? 

"  I  can't  remember  exactly  the  feeling  I  had 
about  it  when  I  enlisted  —  what  made  me  do  it. 
So  many  things  have  happened  since  then.  But 
I  know  I  didn't  think  about  it  long;  so  far  as  I 
remember  I  didn't  hesitate,  not  for  a  minute.  I 
went  straight  off  the  morning  after  war  was  de- 
clared. Midnight,  fourth,  we  were  at  war,  and 
midday,  fifth,  I  was  a  soldier.  Must  have  been 
some  sort  of  instinct.  .  .  .  Sometimes  I  tell  my- 
self what  a  blazing  fool  I  am. 

''  That's  sometimes.     Other  times " 

He  was  silent  for  so  long  that  William  con- 
cluded the  flow  of  his  confidence  had  ceased. 

"  When  you  live  in  a  crowd,"  he  said  at  last, 
"you  can  always  make  excuses  for  yourself. 
Most  likely  you  don't  need  to.  If  you're  a  fool 
or  a  coward  you  herd  with  a  lot  of  other  fools  and 
cowards,  and  you  all  back  each  other  up.  So  you 
never  come  face  to  face  with  yourself." 

The  idea  was  new  to  William,  and  a  year  or  two 
ago  he  would  have  repelled  it  because  it  was  new ; 
now  he  turned  his  eyes  from  the  horizon,  curi- 
ously, to  the  lean  brown  face  at  his  elbow. 

"No?"  he  said  interrogatively. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    259 

"  If,"  said  the  other,  "  if  I  had  gone  back  .  .  . 
it  wouldn't  have  been  the  same.  It  couldn't  have 
been.  ...  If  you  live  that  way  there's  two  things 
you  can't  do  without:  a  good  strong  body  to  stand 
rain  and  wind  and  work,  and  a  mind  you're  not 
afraid  to  be  alone  with.  When  you're  miles  from 
any  one,  in  the  woods  at  night,  you  want  to  be 
good  company  for  yourself.  If  I'd  turned  my 
back  on  it  all,  I  mightn't  have  been  very  good  com- 
pany. I've  done  plenty  of  things  to  set  the  par- 
sons praying  over  me  if  I  told  'em;  I've  been  a 
fool  times  out  of  mind  and  ashamed  of  it  after- 
wards; but " 

He  slid  into  a  silence  that  lasted  until  William 
took  up  the  word ;  not  in  answer  or  argument  but 
irrelevantly,  so  that  he,  too,  might  talk  out  his 
heart. 

"  Do  you  know  what  I  think  I  am  sometimes? 
a  rat  -in  a  trap  —  or  a  squirrel  spinning  round  in  a 
cage.  Very  busy  doing  nothing.  .  .  .  I'll  tell  you 
one  of  the  things  I've  been  doing  lately  —  every 
word  of  it  truth.  I've  been  typing  a  long  corre- 
spondence about  a  civilian  —  a  worker  in  one  of 
the  religious  organizations  who  came  into  the 
town,  ten  miles  by  train,  to  get  stores  he  wanted 
for  his  hut.  The  rule  is,  civilians  mustn't  travel 
by  train  without  a  movement  order  from  the  A. 
P.  M. ;  there  isn't  an  A.  P.  M.  in  the  place  he 
comes  from,  so  he  went  to  the  military  and  got  an 


260    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

ordre  de  service.  He  came  all  right,  but  it's  ir- 
regular —  an  ordre  de  service  should  only  be 
given  to  a  soldier.  One  of  the  M.  P.'s  on  duty  at 
the  station  reported  it  —  and  there's  been  strafing 
and  strafing  and  strafing.  Reams  written  about 
it  —  I've  written  'em.  Not  only  about  the  ordre 
de  service  but  about  who  the  correspondence  is 
to  go  through  —  the  A.  P.  M.'s  office  or  the  Base 
Commandant  or  some  one  else.  After  three  or 
four  weeks  it  was  referred  to  G.  H.  Q.  and  some 
one  there  wrote  to  the  secretary  of  the  organiza- 
tion asking  for  an  explanation  —  and  naturally 
'he  answered  the  letter.  Well,  that  was  irregular 
too;  he  oughtn't  to  have  answered  because  the 
matter  should  have  been  dealt  with  locally  — 
'  gone  through  the  proper  channels.'  So  more 
correspondence  and  strafing.  .  .  .  Sheets  of  pa- 
per —  reams  of  it  —  and  they  say  it's  scarce ! 
And  in  the  end,  nothing  —  just  nothing.  When 
the  wretched  people  wrote  and  asked  exactly  what 
they  were  to  do  —  how  they  were  to  get  a  move- 
ment order  from  an  A.  P.  M.  when  there  wasn't 
an  A.  P.  M.  to  give  it,  we  wrote  back  and  said, 
*  This  correspondence  must  now  cease.'  I  ticked 
it  out  on  my  typewriter." 

"  I  believe  you,"  the  other  nodded,  "  I've  seen 
something  of  that  sort  myself.  .  .  .  And  the 
papers  say,  '  Your  country  wants  you !  ' 

"  And  it  goes  on,"  said  William,  "  day  after 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    261 

day.  I'm  always  busy  —  about  nothing.  *  At- 
tention is  directed  to  G.  R.  O.  9999.  The  Re- 
turn called  for  in  the  form  shown  as  the  third  ap- 
pendix   '  ' 

"  Good  Lord,"  cried  the  other,  "  stop  it. 
That's  just  what  maddens  me  —  I  don't  want  to 
think  of  it." 

William  laughed  sullenly  with  his  chin  resting 
on  his  hand. 

"  I've  not  much  else  to  think  of,"  he  said. 

He  watched  the  lean  man  down  the  hill  till  a 
winding  of  the  road  hid  him;  and  then  he  too  rose, 
in  his  turn,  and  went  back  to  the  town  —  to  the 
rat-trap  wherein  he  made  war ! 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  war  was  well  past  its  third  anniver- 
sary when  William  again  met  Edith 
Haynes.  The  silence  once  broken  be- 
tween them  they  had  corresponded  with  a  fair 
regularity,  and,  leave  being  due  to  him,  he  wrote 
to  ask  if  he  should  be  likely  to  meet  her  in  Lon- 
don; receiving  in  answer  a  hearty  invitation  to 
pass  as  much  of  his  leave  as  he  could  spare  —  the 
whole  of  it  if  he  would  —  with  her  mother  and 
herself  in  Somerset.  The  reply  was  an  eager  ac- 
ceptance ;  hitherto  his  leave,  if  a  respite  from  the 
office,  had  been  dreary  enough  in  comparison  with 
the  home-comings  of  other  men  —  it  was  a  sus- 
picion of  the  loneliness  in  which  it  was  usually 
passed  that  had  prompted  Edith's  invitation. 
She  met  him  at  the  station  and  drove  him  home, 
and  they  picked  up  their  odd  friendship  at  the 
point  where  they  had  left  it  off. 

The  only  other  member  of  the  family  with 
whom  he  made  acquaintance  was  a  delicate,  pale 
mother,  given,  since  her  firstborn  was  killed  at 

262 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    263 

Thiepval,  to  long  silences  and  lonely  brooding;  a 
younger  son  had  been  a  prisoner  since  the  sur- 
render at  Kut,  and  Edith  ran  her  mother  as  well 
as  the  house  and  the  estate.  She  looked  older, 
and  by  more  than  the  passing  of  three  years ;  the 
iron  of  war  had  entered  into  her  soul,  for  the 
brother  killed  in  France  had  been  her  darling  as 
well  as  her  mother's;  but  in  other  ways  she  was 
just  what  William  remembered  her,  a  kindly  and 
capable  good  comrade.  The  delicate,  pale 
mother  kept  much  to  her  room,  and  the  pair,  in 
consequence,  were  left  often  to  each  other's  com- 
pany —  sometimes  tramping  the  home  farm  with 
Edith  bent  on  bailiff's  duties,  sometimes  sitting  by 
the  evening  fire.  For  the  first  day  or  two  he  was 
not  communicative  —  engrossed,  perhaps,  in  mere 
pleasure  in  his  new  surroundings ;  but  even  through 
the  stiffness  and  restraint  of  his  letters  she  had 
guessed  at  something  of  the  change  that  had  come 
over  him,  and  when  he  showed  signs  of  emerging 
from  his  shell  she  took  pains,  on  her  side,  to  draw 
him  out  and  discover  his  attitude  of  mind.  By 
degrees,  from  his  silences  as  much  as  from  his 
speech,  she  learned  of  the  weariness  that  had  set- 
tled like  a  mist  on  his  soul,  the  aimlessness  with 
which  he  plodded  the  pathway  of  his  disciplined 
life.  She  knew  him  for  a  man  disillusioned,  in 
whom  the  imaginings  of  his  pre-soldier  days  had 
died  as  completely  as  his  faith  in  his  pre-war  creed. 


264    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

Had  the  lot  fallen  to  him  he  would  not  have 
shrunk  from  his  turn  in  the  trenches,  and  at  the 
bottom  of  his  heart,  for  Griselda's  sake,  there 
was  always  a  smolder  of  hatred ;  but  he  had  seen 
much  of  the  war  machine,  had  realized  keenly  his 
own  unimportance  therein,  and  he  blushed  when 
he  remembered  that  he  had  once  imagined  that  his 
one  small  arm  and  his  private  vengeance  might  be 
factors,  and  important  factors,  in  the  downfall 
of  the  German  Empire.  And  the  first  mad  im- 
pulse of  agony,  the  impulse  which  would  have  sent 
him  into  battle  single-handed,  had  passed  as  it 
was  bound  to  pass. 

If  she  suspected  him  at  first  of  a  drift  towards 
his  former  "  pacifism  "  she  soon  discovered  her 
mistake ;  the  one  rock  on  which  he  stood  fast  was 
that  conviction  of  error  which  had  come  to  him 
in  the  Forest  of  Arden.  He  hated  the  war  as  it 
affected  himself,  was  weary  of  the  war  in  general; 
all  he  longed  for  was  its  ending,  which  meant  his 
release  from  imprisonment;  but  neither  hatred  nor 
weariness  had  blinded  his  eyes  to  the  folly  of  that 
other  blindness  which  had  denied  that  war  could 
be.  His  contempt  for  his  past  dreams  of  a  field- 
marshal's  baton  was  as  nothing  to  his  contempt 
for  those  further  past  dreams  wherein  fact  was 
dispelled  by  a  theory;  and  he  had,  in  his  own 
words,  "  no  use  for  "  a  pacifist  party  which  had 
never,  as  he  had,  made  confession  of  its  funda- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    265 

mental  error.  He  was  still  in  his  heart  a  soldier, 
even  though  a  soldier  disillusioned;  his  weariness 
of  the  military  machine,  his  personal  grievance 
against  it,  were  not  to  be  compared  to  the  fiery 
conversion  that  had  followed  on  the  outbreak  of 
war.  The  one  concerned  matters  of  detail  only; 
the  other  his  fundamental  faith.  ...  So  much 
Edith  Haynes  understood  from  their  intimate 
fragmentary  talks. 

One  change  in  himself  he  had  not  noticed  till 
Edith,  half  jestingly,  spoke  of  it:  an  affection  that 
was  almost  a  tenderness  for  the  actual  soil  of 
England.  More  than  once  when  he  walked  with 
her  he  contrasted  the  road  or  the  landscape  with 
those  grown  familiar  in  France;  and  the  contrast 
was  always  in  favor  of  the  Somerset  hills  or  the 
winding  Somerset  highway.  Without  ties  as  he 
was,  without  household,  without  family,  she  saw 
that  he  shrank  from  the  idea  of  again  leaving 
"  home." 

"What  shall  you  do  when  the  war  is  over?" 
she  asked  him  one  evening  as  his  leave  neared  its 
end,  curious  to  know  how  he  had  planned  to  spend 
his  arrested  life.  So  far  he  had  spoken  of  no 
future  beyond  the  end  of  the  war  itself;  and  when 
she  put  to  him  the  question  direct  he  only  shook 
his  head  vaguely. 

"  I  don't  know.  It  may  seem  odd  to  you,  but  I 
haven't  thought  much  about  it.  In  fact  " —  he 


266    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

smiled  apologetically  — "  I  don't  believe  I've 
really  thought  at  all." 

uNo,  I  don't  think  it  odd,"  she  told  him. 
"  There  are  a  good  many  like  you  —  I'm  inclined 
to  think  that  you're  only  one  of  the  majority. 
People  whose  business  it  is  to  reorganize  industry 
—  I  suppose  they're  thinking  ahead.  One  prays 
they  are.  But  as  for  the  rest  of  us  ...  it's  dif- 
ficult to  think  ahead  because  of  the  way  it  has 
broken  up  our  lives  and  our  plans.  We've  got 
used  to  its  breaking  them  up." 

"  That's  it,"  he  nodded  back.  "  We've  been 
made  to  do  things  for  so  long.  Taken  and  made 
to  do  them.  .  .  .  Some  have  been  taken  and  killed 
and  some  have  been  taken  and  crushed  —  and 
some  have  only  been  made  prisoners,  like  me. 
But  we've  all  of  us  been  taken  —  and  bent  and 
twisted  into  things  we  never  meant  to  be.  ... 
So  we  don't  plan  —  what's  the  use  ?  .  .  .  I  might 
of  course  —  I'm  not  like  the  men  in  the  trenches 
who  may  be  killed  any  minute.  I'm  safe  enough 
where  I  am  —  safer  than  in  London ;  but  all  the 
same  I  don't.  ...  I  just  wait  to  see  what  hap- 
pens." 

For  a  week  before  William  left  England  there 
had  been  expectation  of  coming  developments  at 
the  front,  and  the  papers  had  spoken  of  "  con- 
siderable aerial  activity,"  on  the  enemy's  side  as 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    267 

on  ours.  The  developments  commenced  in  earn- 
est on  the  day  of  his  return  from  leave;  but  his 
first  personal  experience  of  the  increase  in  aerial 
activity  was  not  for  a  few  days  later,  when,  as  he 
was  passing  through  the  square  in  the  center  of 
the  town,  a  gun  thudded  out  —  and  then  another. 
He  stopped  and  made  one  of  a  little  knot  of  khaki 
that  was  staring  up  into  the  blue,  and  whereof  one 
of  the  component  parts  was  a  corporal  who 
worked  in  his  office.  He  himself  could  see  noth- 
ing but  a  drift  or  two  of  smoke,  but  he  gathered 
from  the  sharper-sighted  corporal  that  there  were 
two  Fritz  planes  overhead,  and  he  stood  cricking 
his  neck  and  blinking  upwards  in  the  strong  sun- 
light while  passers-by  made  groups  on  the  pave- 
ment and  shopkeepers  issued  from  their  doors. 
He  had  seen  the  same  thing  happen  before  and 
quite  harmlessly;  no  one  around  him  seemed 
alarmed  or  disturbed,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the 
guns  ceased  firing  as  the  aeroplanes  passed  out  of 
range. 

"  Photographing,"  said  the  corporal,  as  they 
walked  away  to  the  office.  "  He's  been  over 
quite  a  lot  the  last  week  or  two,  and  some  time 
or  other  I  suppose  we  shall  have  him  in  earnest. 
It's  a  wonder  to  me  he's  left  us  alone  so  long; 
it  'ud  be  worth  his  while  coming  even  if  he  didn't 
do  more  than  drop  a  bomb  or  two  on  the  A.  H. 
T.  D.,  and  start  a  few  hundred  horses." 


268   WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

"  Yes,"  agreed  William,  "  I  suppose  it  would." 
He  was  not  in  the  least  alarmed  as  he  settled  down 
to  his  files;  since  he  joined  the  Army  he  had  never 
been  exposed  to  danger,  and  security  had  become 
with  him  a  habit. 

That  night  there  was  a  heavy  post,  and  the  of- 
fice was  kept  working  late ;  it  was  close  on  eleven 
when  William  was  called  upstairs  to  take  down 
some  letters  from  dictation.  The  officer  who  had 
sent  for  him  was  clearing  his  throat  for  the  first 
sentence  when  the  door  opened  for  the  announce- 
ment, "  Local  aircraft  alarm,  sir." 

"  Oh,  all  right,"  said  the  officer  resignedly. 
"  Go  downstairs,  Tully,  and  come  up  again  when 
the  lights  go  on.  Probably  only  a  false  alarm  — 
we  had  two  the  other  night.  Just  the  sort  of 
thing  that  would  happen  when  we're  behind- 
hand." 

He  went  out  grumbling,  and  William  followed 
him,  feeling  his  way  by  the  banisters,  for  the 
electric  light  was  turned  off  while  he  was  still  on 
the  upper  landing;  other  men  from  all  over  the 
warren  of  a  building  were  descending  likewise, 
and  they  bumped  and  jostled  each  other  in  the 
sudden  darkness  on  the  stairs.  There  were  jests 
as  they  bumped  and  much  creaking  of  boots  — 
through  which,  while  William  was  still  a  flight 
from  the  ground  floor,  came  the  first  rapid  thud- 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    269 

ding  of  "  Archie."  On  it,  a  moment  later,  an 
unmistakable  bomb  and  the  pattering  outburst  of 
machine-guns.  .  .  .  William  listened  curiously;  it 
was  his  first  experience  of  an  air  raid,  and  though 
the  pace  of  his  heart  quickened,  as  yet  there  was 
no  real  fear  in  him;  but  a  man  pressed  against 
him  by  the  descending  stream  gasped  audibly  and 
clawed  round  William's  arm  with  his  fingers. 
The  action  was  fear  made  manifest  in  darkness, 
and  William,  instinctively  knowing  it  infectious, 
repelled  it  and  strove  to  free  his  wrist;  but  the 
shaking  fingers,  eloquent  of  terror,  only  clung 
more  tightly  to  their  hold. 

"What  is  it?"  William  snapped.  "What's 
the  matter?  " 

"  It's  me  —  Wright,"  a  voice  whispered  back 
in  jerks.  "  I  can't  help  it  —  the  Lord  knows  I 
try,  but  I  can't.  If  it  was  shells  I  could  stand 

'em,  but "  A  near-by  gun  beat  down  his 

voice  but  did  not  stop  it — "  at  Dunkirk.  I  v/as 
buried  two  hours:  two  mortal  hours  before  they 
got  me  out  —  and  when  I  was  in  hospital  he  came 
over  and  bombed  us  again.  He  got  one  right  on 
to  us,  and  I  was  blown  out  of  bed,  and  the  men  at 
the  other  end  of  the  ward  were  in  pieces.  In 
pieces,  I  tell  you  —  beastly  bits  of  flesh " 

William  tried  to  stand  it  —  realizing  that  the 
man  must  cling  and  gibber  to  some  one  as  a  child 
clings  and  wails  to  its  nurse.  They  had  turned 


270    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

into  a  room  on  the  ground  floor  —  there  were  no 
cellars,  but  it  was  esteemed  the  safest  place  in 
the  building  by  reason  of  the  comparative  absence 
of  glass  —  and  the  pair  of  them  stood  backs 
against  the  wall.  When  Wright  stopped  talking 
—  which  was  not  often  —  William  could  hear  his 
breath  as  it  came  whining  through  his  teeth;  and 
he  remembered  that  the  man  wore  the  ribbon  of 
the  D.  C.  M  —  a  man  who  had  once  had  nerve 
and  to  all  appearance  was  sound,  but  who  had  not 
sufficient  hold  on  himself  to  keep  his  terror  from 
his  tongue.  He  spoke  of  it  unceasingly;  when- 
ever the  sounds  without  died  down  William  could 
hear  him  whispering  —  now  of  the  night  when  he 
was  bombed  in  hospital  and  now  of  the  building 
they  were  in.  It  was  no  good  as  a  shelter  — 
would  crumble  like  a  house  of  cards.  Nothing 
was  any  good  but  a  cellar  or  trenches  —  there 
should  have  been  trenches.  And  they  were  so 
damnably  close  to  the  station,  and  the  station  was 
just  what  those  devils  were  trying  to  hit.  There 
came  a  moment  when  William  could  bear  it  no 
more,  and  wrenched  himself  free  of  the  clawing 
fingers  on  his  sleeve;  he  dared  not  feel  them 
longer,  lest  his  heart  also  melted  within  him. 

His  nervousness  took  the  form  of  a  difficulty  in 
keeping  still,  and  he  fidgeted  about  the  darkened 
room;  but  the  room  was  fairly  full,  and  he  could 
not  move  far  —  after  a  step  or  two  this  way  and 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    271 

a  step  or  two  that,  he  was  brought  up  by  a  solid 
group  that  stretched  from  the  wall  to  a  table. 
He  came  to  a  standstill  on  the  edge  of  the  group 
and  tried  to  listen  to  their  talk;  forced  himself  to 
listen  to  it  —  and  all  the  time  straining  his  ears 
through  the  murmur  for  the  droning  of  the  Gotha 
engines.  He  fought  with  himself  and  fought 
more  manfully  than  he  knew;  striving  to  thrust 
out  of  his  mind  Wright's  phrase  about  the 
"  beastly  bits  of  flesh,"  and  to  fasten  his  hearing, 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  else,  on  the  voice  of  a  man, 
his  neighbor  in  the  darkness,  who  had  lately  seen 
a  German  aeroplane  brought  down,  and,  having 
apparently  some  mechanical  knowledge,  was  de- 
scribing its  points  and  its  engines.  They,  the 
engines,  were  first-rate,  he  said,  waxing  technical; 
but  even  if  he  had  not  been  told  it,  he  should  have 
guessed  from  the  fittings  of  the  plane  that  Jerry 
was  getting  a  bit  scarce  in  his  stock  of  rubber  and 

leather.     What   he    was   using Here    the 

windows  rattled  loudly  and  drowned  him. 
"  That's  pretty  close,"  some  one  commented,  and 
William  moved  a  restless  step  away.  Once  it 
had  seemed  to  him  an  easy  thing  to  follow  Gri- 
selda  and  die ;  now  all  the  moral  strength  he  pos- 
sessed went  into  the  effort  not  to  shrink,  to  be 
master  of  his  body,  to  behave  decently  and  en- 
dure. That  was  all  that  seemed  to  matter  —  to 
be  steady  and  behave  decently  —  so  that,  for  all 


272    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

his  fear  of  instant  death,  he  never  turned  his 
thoughts  to  God.  .  .  .  He  had  not  known  how 
beautiful  silence  could  be  till  it  came  almost  sud- 
denly, like  a  flood  of  clear,  cool  water;  when  some 
one,  muttering  that  it  seemed  to  be  over,  opened 
the  door  and  went  out  into  the  courtyard,  he  fol- 
lowed and  stood  there  feeling  the  silence  as  some- 
thing clean,  exquisite  and  grateful.  His  hands 
were  wet  and  hot,  and  he  stretched  them  out  to  the 
air;  if  he  had  not  prayed  when  he  was  under  the 
spell  of  fear,  his  heart,  at  his  release  from  it,  was 
filled  with  something  like  praise. 

"  Listen,"  said  a  voice  in  his  ear.  It  was 
Wright,  his  face  uplifted  in  the  moonlight  and 
disfigured  by  ugly  twitchings.  "  Listen,"  he  said, 
"  they're  coming  back."  .  .  .  William  shrank 
from  him  irritably,  but  the  man  had  not  spoken 
particularly  to  him,  and,  having  spoken,  turned 
swiftly  and  went  back  into  the  house.  He  had 
been  the  first  to  catch  the  double-noted  drone 
which  as  they  stood  and  listened  grew  nearer. 

"  That's  him,  sure  enough,"  another  voice 
agreed.  "  Coming  up  in  relays.  He'll  be  out 
to  make  a  night  of  it  —  I  thought  we'd  got  rid  of 
him  too  quickly." 

A  searchlight  wheeled  and  the  anti-aircraft 
spoke  on  the  word;  some  one  cried,  "  Got  'im," 
and  pointed,  and  for  an  instant  William  had  sight 
of  a  wicked  thing  caught  in  the  ray  and  rushing 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    273 

upwards.  Battery  and  machine-gun  gave  tongue 
at  the  sight,  but  in  a  flash  the  climbing  devil  had 
vanished  and  the  searchlight  wheeled  after  it 
fruitlessly.  As  they  stood  and  watched  it  wheel- 
ing, a  voice  called,  "  Come  in,  men,"  and  they 
went  back  perforce  within  their  walls. 

The  first  attack  had  lasted  not  much  over  half 
an  hour;  this  time  the  ordeal  by  darkness  and 
waiting  was  longer.  William  held  himself 
tightly,  ashamed  of  the  weakness  with  which 
Wright  had  infected  him  and  keeping  it  doggedly 
at  bay;  he  talked  when  he  could  think  of  any- 
thing to  talk  about  —  odd  irrelevant  fragments 
of  whatever  came  into  his  head,  anything  to  keep 
himself  from  listening.  At  one  time  he  made  a 
conscious  and  determined  effort  to  turn  his  talk 
and  his  mind  with  it  to  something  unconnected 
with  air-raids;  but  always  his  speech,  like  that  of 
his  companions,  came  back  to  the  thought  of  the 
moment. 

"  Do  you  remember,"  he  asked  a  man  beside 
him,  "  what  a  fuss  there  was  about  the  first 
Channel  flight?  I  forget  the  fellow's  name  —  a 
Frenchman?  " 

Some  one  supplied  the  name,  "  Bleriot,"  out  of 
the  darkness. 

"  Yes,  Bleriot  —  that's  it.  ...  Queer  when 
you  think  of  it.  Nobody  had  any  idea  then  what 
it  would  mean  —  getting  into  cellars  and  hiding 


274    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

in  the  dark.  If  they  had  " —  he  forced  an  at- 
tempt at  a  laugh  — "  they  wouldn't  have  been  so 
pleased." 

"  No,"  his  neighbor  agreed  with  him  jocularly; 
"  they  wouldn't  have  been  so  pleased.  We 
thought  we  was  all  going  to  flap  about  like  birds 
—  and  instead  the  most  of  us  go  scuttling  into 
holes  like  beetles  what  the  cook's  trying  to  stamp 
on.  That's  flying —  for  them  as  don't  fly." 

"  Yes,"  said  William,  "  that's  flying."  The 
beetle  simile  caught  his  fancy  oddly,  and  he  found 
himself  contrasting  it  with  his  old  idea  of  a  sol- 
dier. After  all,  the  beetle-warrior  was  a  new  de- 
velopment —  it  was  impossible  to  think  of  Napo- 
leonic heroes  as  beetles.  Yet  if  they  were  alive 
they  would  have  to  scuttle  too  —  even  Murat  the 
magnificent,  and  Ney,  the  Red  Lion.  .  .  . 

"  When  the  next  war  comes,"  his  jocular  neigh- 
bor was  continuing,  "  every  man  that  ain't  in  the 
R.  F.  C.  'ull  be  crawling  at  the  bottom  of  a  coal- 
mine. And  I  don't  mind  mentioning  in  confidence 
that  if  I  saw  a  coal-mine  'andy  I  wouldn't  mind 
crawling  down  it  now." 

"  No,"  said  William,  for  the  sake  of  speaking, 
"  I  don't  suppose  you  would."  He  was  trying  to 
think  of  something  further  to  say  when  he  felt 
the  man  on  his  other  side  start  perceptibly  and 
stiffen  in  attention.  Something  caught  at  his 
throat  and  he  could  only  whisper,  "  What  is  it?  " 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    275- 

"  He's  stopping  his  engine,"  said  the  other 
quietly;  and  before  William  had  time  to  ask  what 
he  meant  the  next  bomb  fell  in  the  courtyard. 

There  was  only  one  man  wholly  uninjured  — 
the  terror-haunted  Wright,  who  ran  out,  splashed 
with  other  men's  blood,  took  screaming  to  his 
heels  and  collapsed  a  mile  along  the  road.  There 
he  lay  till  long  after  the  bell  of  St.  Nicholas  had 
rung  an  "  All  Clear  "  to  the  town  —  until  long 
after  the  ambulances  telephoned  for  from  the  hos- 
pitals outside  had  loaded  up  in  the  streets  across 
which  cordons  had  been  drawn  by  military  police 
and  French  firemen.  Men  and  fragments  of  men 
were  taken  from  the  ruins,  some  speedily,  some 
after  much  search;  and  among  them  Private  Tully, 
past  terror,  but  breathing,  still  alive  but  only 
alive. 

He  spoke  but  a  few  times  after  the  explosion 
had  broken  him,  and  the  men  who  lifted  him  on  a 
stretcher  to  the  ambulance  and  out  of  it  could 
see  that  he  suffered  not  at  all;  the  shifting  and 
handling  that  was  torture  to  others  left  his 
maimed  and  mauled  body  unaffected.  The  in- 
jury to  the  spine  that  was  killing  him  had  bereft 
him  of  the  power  of  pain  as  well  as  of  the  power 
of  movement,  and  in  the  hospital,  where  a  few 
minutes'  drive  from  the  ruins  landed  him,  he  lay 
quietly  alive  for  a  day  or  two,  for  the  most  part 


276    WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN 

dumb  and  unconscious,  but  with  intervals  of  sense 
and  lucid  speech.  Once,  in  such  an  interval,  he 
whispered  to  the  nurse  that  his  wife,  too,  was 
buried  in  France;  whereby  she  saw  that  he  knew 
he  was  about  to  die. 

Later  he  asked  that  some  one  would  write  to 
Edith  Haynes,  and  tried  to  explain  who  she  was. 
"No  relation  —  just  a  lady  I  know.  ...  I 
should  like  her  to  hear." 

The  last  person  he  spoke  to  was  a  chaplain,  a 
young  man  making  his  round  of  the  ward,  who, 
seeing  intelligence  in  the  pale  blue  eyes,  bent  over 
the  bed  to  ask  if  there  was  anything  he  wanted. 
The  chaplain  had  been  warned  by  a  sister  that  here 
was  a  hopeless  case,  and  he  spoke  very  gently  and 
bent  very  low  for  the  answer. 

It  drifted  out  faintly  in  a  slow  and  expression- 
less whisper. 

"  No,  thank  you,"  said  William.  "  I  don't 
seem  to  have  been  much  good  .  .  .  but  there 
comes  a  time  .  .  .  when  nothing  matters." 

"  Not  even,"  asked  the  chaplain,  feeling  his 
way,  "  the  sense  that  you  have  done  your  duty?  " 

"  Most  people  do  that,"  said  William.  "  The 
question  is  ...  if  you've  been  much  use  when 
you've  done  it." 

The  chaplain,  puzzled,  said  something  of  in- 
finite mercy  and  the  standard  of  God  not  being 
as  the  standard  of  man. 


WILLIAM  — AN  ENGLISHMAN    277 

"  If  you've  done  your  best  .  .  ."  he  suggested. 
"  Most  people  do  that,"   said  William  again 
.  .  .  and  slid  back  once  more  into  silence. 

He  was  buried  without  mourners,  save  those 
detailed  for  the  duty;  who,  none  the  less,  stiffened 
in  salute  of  his  coffin  and  called  him  farewell  on 
the  bugle.  His  death,  duly  entered  in  the  hos- 
pital books,  was  reported  to  the  Casualty  De- 
partment; and  the  Graves  Registration  clerks 
took  note  of  his  burial  and  filed  it  for  possible 
inquiries. 


THE   END 


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